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Copyright N° _ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE YOUNG MAN 
IN MODERN LIFE 



THE YOUNG MAN 
IN MODERN LIFE 

By BEVERLEY WARNER, D.D. 

Author of " The Facts and the Faith : A Study 
in the Rationalism of the Apostles' Creed,'' etc. 




NEW YORK • DODD, MEAD 
AND COMPANY • MCMII 



Copyright, 1902, by 
Dodd, Mead and Company 



n> 



First edition published March , igo2 



CONGRESS 
I Two Cc-.» Receive* 

MAR. 11 1902 

aCopvwght enT * y 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



DEDICATION 



THERE are five youngsters in this old world 
to whom the author of the following pages 
bears a relationship of responsibility. 

His own boys, Philip Beverley and John McCon- 
nell ; his nephew, Lewis Frederic ; his godson, 
Garrett B. Linderman, Jr. ; and his curly-headed 
name-child, Beverley Warner Linderman. * 

To you, my dear lads, I beg to dedicate this 
little book with a few preliminary remarks. 

I have no idea that the counsels and hints con- 
tained within these covers will be adopted as a 
manual of deportment by you or any one else. If 
I can but get you, and others like you, to ponder 
some of the responsibilities and privileges of your 
glorious youth, I will be content. 

The book will not receive the unqualified endorse- 
ment of the conservative critic. He (more probably 
she) will discover sl certain unconventionality of 
language and thought which may easily be taken as 
an indication that the writer is not grave and solemn 
enough to act as the adviser of youth. 

Admitting, as I freely do, the many faults in 
which this simple message is clothed, I frankly con- 

V 



Dedication 



fess that I do not much concern myself about what 
the elderly critic thinks, so long as I get the ears 
of the boys I love. 

The boys will understand, I hope, that I am not 
writing to them as a priest laying down the law, 
but as a man who has not forgotten his own boy- 
hood, and is covered all over with bruises, most of 
which have been the result of his own carelessness, 
— and, sometimes, ignorance. 

I have tried to write plainly and without reserve 
on some important points. It would not have 
been worth my while to write, or yours to read, 
otherwise. 



VI 



IN THE HOPE OF BEING READ 

THIS little book is written for young 
men, by one not so far removed 
from his own young manhood as 
to have forgotten its dangers, its bewil- 
dering puzzles, and its pitiful mistakes. 

It is an honest, however inadequate, 
effort to set young men thinking — 
before the years draw nigh when they 
shall say they have no pleasure in them 
— how inevitably their early days affect 
and mould their later lives, in which lies 
achievement — or failure. 

The writer has lost so much out of life 
that he might perhaps have had if he had 
listened a little more intently to the coun- 
vii 



In the Hope of being Read 

sels of his elders, that he does not mind 
the humiliation of the acknowledgment, 
if the dismal fact, frankly admitted, will 
arrest the attention of other young men 
— in time. 

These pages do not contain a museum 
of copybook mottoes, but a grouping of 
the salient, outstanding influences in 
modern life which shape young man- 
hood. 

If there is some advice tendered and 
some counsel volunteered, it is not from 
any smug sense of standing on the 
heights and looking down upon the 
young man, in a professional, admoni- 
tory attitude. Rather it is offered in a 
sense of sympathetic brotherhood, by one 
who is still in the valley of struggle, 
where every man who is worth his salt 
must enter and play his part. 

It is not by some miraculous vision or 
viii 



In the Hope of being Read 

abnormal voice that the young man in 
modern life will be moved to thought 
and action. 

The law and the prophets are ever 
with us. The plain law of duty, at 
whatever cost (and no one hath knowl- 
edge sometimes save the one who strug- 
gles, how much it costs), the clear pro- 
phetic note of the ideal as the standard 
of life, whether a man ploughs a rough 
field, or paints a deathless canvas. 

These are yours, young man, always 
and everywhere. You must live your 
own life. Others may sacrifice for you 
and even die for you, but they can't live 
for you. 

We who have been fighting the wild 
beasts at Ephesus for many years, and 
bear the marks in body, soul, and heart, 
cry out to you, not to avoid the struggle, 
but to bear yourselves in it as men, not 

ix 



In the Hope of being Read 

beasts, as sons of God, not tramps on the 
highway. 

The way of God with a man is a curi- 
ous way, sometimes it seems grotesque. 
But the man may learn the way if he 
will. If these pages help one man to- 
wards that way, it will have been quite 
w r orth while. 



CONTENTS 

Page 

I. The Young Man in the Market 

Place i 

II. His Surroundings ....*. 17 

III. His Work 44 

IV. His Amusements 77 

V. His Books and Reading . . .103 

VI. His Marriage 128 

VII. His Religion 154 



xi 



THE YOUNG MAN 
IN MODERN LIFE 

I 

IN THE MARKET PLACE 

TO the young men about to take 
their places in the market place, 
set up their stalls, and offer their 
wares for sale : Greeting. 

The counsel of the fathers need not 
always be followed, but it should always 
command a respectful hearing. 

Most men of middle age would like 
to be young again and begin all over. 
They are shy of admitting it, because it 
seems like a reflection upon the use 
they have made of life, but down in 
their hearts they do admit it, — with a 
qualification. They would like to be 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

young, plus the experience of the years. 
To be perfectly frank, they have no 
desire to fight through the battle of 
life on the same lines. They do not 
pine for the briers and brambles and 
stone-bruises, marks of which they still 
bear. Far from it! But they would 
like to be young again with the wisdom 
of middle age, with the vision of experi- 
ence, with the strength and wariness 
which the long struggle has brought 
them. And knowing that this cannot 
be for themselves, they would like to 
endow their sons and their sons' sons 
with this equipment, which they them- 
selves carry somewhat heavily. 

This is the reason for the thousand 
and one books addressed to the young 
man. It is not because we who write 
have done the things we ought to have 
done, and left undone the things we 
ought not to have done, that we utter 

2 



In the Market Place 



our preachments and deliver ourselves 
of Indian summer lectures, — but the 
contrary. 

If the young man could see with our 
eyes for one twenty-four hours, there 
would be such conversions and search- 
ings of heart as would alter the face 
of the earth. 

When we talk of the responsibilities 
of the young man, it is not out of 
love of rhetoric, nor because of mere 
superiority of age or achievement over 
him ; it is because we feel, with the old 
apostle, the potency of his magnificent 
endowment of audacious hope and faith. 

This responsibility of youth is not 
often felt by the young man, to be 
either the dazzling privilege or the 
awful burden it really is. He takes 
his surroundings, his politics, his amuse- 
ments, his books, his companions, as 
he breathes in the air or eats his 

3 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

dinner. That they go to make up his 
character he does not often stop to 
think. If he is told that he is but the 
sum of them, and they are all bits of his 
very self, he thanks you for the glitter- 
ing generality, and that is all. 

He knows that he can change his 
environment in any one of these de- 
tails to-day or to-morrow if he chooses. 
He can cast off and take on again. 
What he seldom pauses long enough 
to reflect upon is, that the very power 
of change, this free will which differen- 
tiates him from a beast of the earth, is 
also a part of his responsibility. 

So long as he feels that he can change 
his mind and therefore his course of 
action, so long he feels that he has life 
in his hands to mould it as he will. 

I would like to have the young man 
realize that his responsibility is not so 
much for to-day as for to-morrow, — 
4 



In the Market Place 



the to-morrow of wrinkled foreheads 
and gray hairs. He thinks that he can 
mould to-day, but he is apt to be mis- 
taken. We, who are his elders, moulded 
to-day, and we are not over-proud of our 
achievement in some particulars. 

The young man is a great deal more 
of to-morrow than to-day. He wonders 
very often, especially in commencement 
day orations, why this or that condition 
of affairs in church, in state, in society, 
have been suffered to exist so long in 
such an unsatisfactory manner. He 
will find out in a score or so of years. 
Meanwhile the elderly gentlemen, who 
are gravely listening on the back seats, 
submit meekly to the scathing rebuke. 

It is so trite a thing to say — I re- 
member it was the theme of sophomore 
orations twenty odd years ago — that the 
boys of to-day are the men of the next 
generation. One is almost ashamed to 

5 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

repeat it, and there is no original for- 
mula in which to deck it out. The only 
variation I can display is, that not only 
on the young man, but in the young 
man lies to-morrow. As you are to- 
day, to-morrow will be. You are mod- 
elling the churchmen, senators, poets, 
novelists, artists, scientists, and other 
puppets who will play their parts on 
to-morrow's stage, not so much as they 
would like to then, but as you prepare 
and direct them now. 

We oldsters do not alter these things 
to-day, because we cannot. You will not 
change the world very materially, young 
men, a generation hence, if you wait for 
a generation to begin work. You may 
make it almost what you will, if you 
begin to-day. 

Old men do not win the world's vic- 
tories, unless, like David, they prepare 
for Goliath by tackling bears in the days 

6 



In the Market Place 



of their youth. It is the young men 
who face problems before which mid- 
life shakes its head, and dare to enter 
where even elderly angels fear to tread. 

There are some responsibilities of 
youth which perhaps are not often 
brought to your notice, or if they are 
you are apt to think lightly of, Much 
seem to me worth thinking over in 
those quiet hours which youth ought 
to snatch from the cares and the pleas- 
ures of life. 

One of these is joy, — plain, straight- 
forward, honest enthusiasm for life. If 
your youth has it not, you are not whole- 
some, and you need atonic of some sort, 
probably out-of-door exercise. Nourish 
the joy of being alive. You ought to 
revel in the sounds of the morning, be- 
cause it is morning, and rejoice in the 
hush of the night, because it is night. 

There are those whose motto is nil 
7 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

admirari ; in whose shrivelled souls and 
wizened hearts the tide of joy and hap- 
piness never rises into realization. 

Such lives are unhuman. They may 
plead poverty, ill health, disappointment, 
and ask how can there be joy in such a 
life. It is not worth living! This is 
a gross misconception of life, for it cen- 
tres everything in self. But outside of 
our bodies, the good God gave color to 
the grasses, fragrance to the flowers, and 
laid away treasures in the depths of the 
earth for men to seek and be glad over. 

The audacity of the youth stepping 
out upon this old earth with a laugh of 
scorn at its age-old problems, as though 
there were anything insoluble about 
them, — this must be the joy of the 
angels. This earth is a divine earth, 
and to man is given the secret of its 
existence, the key to all its treasures. 
In innocence or ignorance let the 

8 



In the Market Place 



young man begin with this joy. It is 
the capital stored up for after use when 
the eyes are dim and the heart tired. 

But sometimes the earth beckons and 
its voices clamor for us to go ahead too 
fast. There is the responsibility, of go- 
ing slowly. Festina lente. Each gen- 
eration must do its own work in order 
that the next may have something solid 
to work upon. To-day's achievements 
are not often great; but if perfectly 
done, they are God's will for to-day, and 
no legitimate stretch can make them 
lap over into to-morrow. To-morrow 
may not be yours, in the sense of de- 
manding your toil, — but another's. 
Terah, the father of Abraham, preceded 
his son in the emigration from Ur of the 
Chaldees. He went a day's march and 
camped at Haran, where he died. Abra- 

9 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

ham bided his time, and finally, after 
burying Terah, took up the journey. 
Terah gave the impulse, Abraham 
carried it into actuality. The pioneer 
seldom builds cities, but his blazed path 
through the virgin forest opens an 
easier journey for the builders who come 
after. If one can give an impulse to his 
generation towards better things, he is a 
part of the final triumph, and no mean 
part. 

# 

There is a further responsibility laid 
upon the young man because of another 
characteristic of his youth, — his capacity 
for seeing visions and dreaming dreams. 

We all have them, but they are richer 
and more frequent in the early days. 
That is the generous time, the trustful 
period, w r hen we undoubtedly have finer 
thoughts and see finer things. It is 
10 



In the Market Place 



only when we grow old that our doubts 
make traitors of us, 

" And make us lose the good we oft might win, 
By fearing to attempt." 

His is a poor and barren young man- 
hood, indeed, that has no dreams or 
visions. It is a sterile life, and onfe that 
no accumulations of the market place 
can enrich. 

Grown-up folk are too often cruel in 
their treatment of these enthusiasms 
which I cannot do else than set down 
as among the solemn responsibilities of 
youth. They ought not to be laughed at. 
They should be encouraged. A warm 
and tender heart may easily be turned into 
a stone. God help the man in whose 
boyish bosom the passionate longings 
and imaginings have been smothered by 
the cold prudence of age. 

We go to school, and then to college 
ii 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

or into practical life, to achieve some- 
thing. He is a poor stick who does not 
believe he is bound to achieve the highest 
and best. Why not, since one must 
stand at the top, and clustered about 
him a host of equally worthy ones ? It 
is the vision of conquest and dream of 
triumph that carry men through many 
a morass of mediocre detail and necessary 
routine. 

When a man finds himself, at eventide, 
on one of the lower rounds of the ladder 
of earthly success, it is for one of two 
reasons : either he never lifted his eyes 
towards the top, in the dreams and visions 
of hopeful youth, and so was not worthy ; 
or else his place in the divine purpose 
was on a low r er round, and his life is a 
success after all. The soldier who 
guards the camp equipage, or cares for 
the wounded at the rear, is a part of the 
victory, of which the flag streaming at 
12 



In the Market Place 



the head of the army is the sign and 
pledge. 

# 

I may be wrong, but I believe that the 
visions of higher, better, and nobler 
things than are, which float before the 
eyes of ardent youth, are the measures 
of their destiny and the standards by 
which they will be judged. A man can 
always climb to the heights he can see, 
— if he will. Very often he can do 
this here and now on this earth. If 
not, then somewhere and some time, for 
man was not born into a little garden 
to cut down tangled undergrowth for a 
few years. He was set in a universe, 
endowed with a life beyond life, which 
will be ours when time is old ; a life 
whose purpose grows ever clearer as the 
ages grow dim, a life which, while bound 
up now in time, is not for time. 
13 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

Dreams are not necessarily illusions. 
They are man's power of rising through 
things as they are to things as they may 
be. They are not framed in the work- 
shop of man, but are of God, and so are 
big with purpose and meaning. 

Everything in earth and sky and sea and 
man, indicates a purpose the final propor- 
tions of which are not written in terms 
of space and time ; a purpose in the pur- 
pose of Him who bore every man in mind 
when the morning stars sang together 
and the earth was fresh from His hand. 

# 

The young man has the responsibility 
of himself, not as an isolate atom, des- 
tined to fall useless on a burnt-out cin- 
der heap, but as the member of a great 
family, inspired with the life of the 
Father God, with the duties, privileges, 
and responsibilities of sonship. No 

14 



In the Market Place 



hopes are too large, no faith too deep, 
no visions and dreams too extravagant, 
for a son of the Highest. 

How can one find out the purpose of 
his life ? How dares one not find it out ? 
An oyster need not worry, and alligators 
need only flop and crawl; but a man 
must think, and walk erect. Hearing a 
variety of sounds, he must hear the one 
voice that calls him to his task in life. 
Seeing a diversity of paths before him, 
he must see the one path in which alone 
it is right for him to w r alk. 

But this is hard? Of course it is 
hard. It is hard to be a man. But we 
do not therefore throw away life. And 
if we continue to exist, we must find out 
what purpose there is in our existence, 
or else be as the beasts of the field. 

It is not enough to eat and drink and 
IS 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

clothe one's self. If that be all, I am free 
to say that a tiger roaming the virgin 
forest, or the ape chattering from a 
hanging bough, has somewhat the best 
of us. It is character that differentiates 
us from the beasts of the field. There is 
no royal road to character, any more than 
to knowledge. It is not created by books, 
though sometimes out of books comes a 
word of prophecy, a note of illumination. 

# 

To set young men thinking is the 
most that can be done for them by those 
who love them and care for them. 

It is hard to think, and many shrink 
from the pain of it; but if a young 
man is dismayed at the cost of thought 
and turns away from it, he abdicates the 
throne of life. He may make a very 
decent and docile animal, but he will 
never deserve to be called a man. 
16 



II 

HIS SURROUNDINGS 

WE are not all in the market 
place on equal terms. The 
rhetoric of the Declaration of 
Independence is not to be taken too 
literally. Mr. Jefferson owned slaves. 
He meant to say that all white men 
were created equal and in possession of 
the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness. Equality of 
right is one thing, and of opportunity 
quite another. 

No man born of woman is absolutely 
free, and all men are as truly born in 
castes in democratic America as in 
aristocratic England. We recognize 
this truth in dogs and horses, why not 

in men? 

2 I7 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

With limitations and qualifications, 
however, it is true that all men are free 
to choose what they will do to-day, and 
what they will be to-morrow. 

But power of choice, thus modified, 
destroys all equality. Heredity and 
environment, the roots of the past, the 
things that stand about the present, force 
themselves upon our consideration. 

These are big words, and they mean 
big things. Nevertheless they are simple 
enough for the average young man to 
grasp; and whether he believes it or 
doubts it, they are altogether the most 
powerful influences in moulding the 
beginnings of his young manhood. 

For his heredity he has no respon- 
sibility. If his fathers ate sour grapes, 
his teeth are set on edge, and he must 
get on as best he can with the heritage. 
Those long-forgotten ancestors of ours, 
who gave little or no thought to their 
18 



His Surroundings 



posterity, are responsible for much of 
both the good and the evil in us. They 
may have tainted us with diseases, moral 
or physical, or they may have poured 
the inspiration of noble health into our 
veins. It is a comfortable thought that 
the law of heredity set down in the 
Second Commandment is as merciful as 
it is clear. The sins of the fathers last 
on unto the third and fourth generation 
of them that hate God (that is, of them 
who disobey his laws), but his mercy 
continues its benign influence unto thou- 
sands of generations in them who love 
him (that is, who obey his laws). 

A man may modify the effects of 
heritage. He may overcome evil, and 
nourish good. He may fight the moral 
and physical germs of disease, and either 
slay them altogether in himself, or so 
weaken them that his sons will complete 
the conquest. He may bloom with the 
19 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

flowers and fruits of noble ideals and 
righteous deeds, broadening the skirts 
of light from yesterday into to-morrow, 
or he may shrivel and dry up, and 
narrow the horizon in which shines the 
light of truth. 

The important thing for the young 
man to see is, that he is not entirely a 
free and untrammelled creature, even in 
the dawn of his life's day ; that he has 
to begin as he is, weighted or inspired 
by the past This is the law and the 
prophets. 

But it is also important to note, in this 
connection, that however crippled he 
may feel himself to be by his heredity, 
he is never justified in appealing to his 
limitations as an excuse for inaction or 
wrong action. The " could n't help it " 
whine is below the dignity of a sick 
animal. Neither is he justified in assum- 
ing toploftical airs because of the pos- 
20 



His Surroundings 



session of powers and advantages in- 
herited and unearned. Noblesse oblige. 

Environment, in a certain sense, is a 
more important factor than heredity in 
the building of character, because the 
young man has it in his own hands after 
his first few years. 

But during these earliest years his 
environment also has a powerful influ- 
ence upon his development. 

The young man born and nurtured 
amidst comfort and ease, surrounded by 
refined and cultivated people, breathing 
an intellectual atmosphere, who early 
becomes familiar with books, pictures, 
and music, who falls under the influence 
of gracious womanhood, — this one has a 
distinct advantage as he steps over the 
threshold dividing youth from manhood. 

On the contrary, the boy born in 
poverty, or among ignorant and coarse 
people, to whom as he grows up, books 
21 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

are sealed volumes, who finds pictures 
blurs of color, and music a clash of un- 
meaning sounds ; or, worse, he who is 
born a grade lower, among vicious people, 
accustomed to crime and indecency, and 
the crass misery of pariahdom, — is 
handicapped from the start. 

Many a poor boy climbs out and finds 
a place among the seats of the mighty. 
Sometimes it is possible for the child 
of the gutter and the prison shadow to 
push his way upward and outward. But 
it is absurd to say that the boys at the 
two extremes have equal opportunities. 
I use these extremes as illustrations. 
When I think of life's terrible handicap 
in the cases of so many children, I am 
glad to believe that the good God has a 
place, and finds a use, for those items of 
His creation which will not balance in 
our humanly cast up totals. 

But I am speaking of the average 
22 



His Surroundings 



boy, at school or in college, at the 
desk or behind the counter; the boy 
who in any village, town, or city is to 
hold and exercise the citizen's suffrage 
to-morrow. 

The law of heredity works in him, but 
he may work upon and modify it He 
has the whole universe back of him and 
around him, if he honestly seeks* the 
truth in theory and in practice. A lie, 
whether it be of a social, political, or 
religious nature (yes, there are " reli- 
gious " lies), flourishes for a time, but 
it is an alien thing in God's world, and 
has no lasting sources of nutriment 
to draw upon. Lies flourish because 
men are temporarily interested in their 
fruits. They are plants of the forcing 
house of interest or greed. The divine 
order is against them. So every one 
who fights a lie is aligning himself with, 
and availing himself of, the forces by 
23 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

which the stars swing in their courses, 
and the seeds of the earth bear fruit 
after their kind. Everything is on the 
side of the truth-seeker. Slowly per- 
haps, but surely, if he will, he may over- 
come the effect of the sins of his fathers, 
which, by a law of nature, last of them- 
selves only a generation or so. He 
may suffer in the process. The law of 
sacrifice is the sacramental sign of 
growth. Material pains are forewarn- 
ings of the birth pangs of truth and 
righteousness, struggling out of the 
womb of time. Man must die in order 
to live. But life, and not death, is the 
interpretation of decaying seed and 
bursting husk. 

Potent as a young man's surroundings 
are, they are things after all, not powers. 
The man is the power. The circum- 
stances of birth, education, companion- 
ship, are the chessmen in the game of 
24 



His Surroundings 



human life ; and you, young men, are 
the players. Everything that you find 
about you, when you come to yourself 
and realize something of your human 
potency, is to be used, worked over, 
moulded, as you will. 

At first you are chosen for a certain 
environment, but presently you begin to 
choose. Occupation, comrades, amuse- 
ments, books, as you make choice, 
you are forming character. The things 
by which you surround yourself become 
a mould, — they fashion you. You may 
thus be an oyster to merely exist, or a 
reptile to creep and cower, an animal to 
browse, or a man, erect, purposeful, 
transforming the world about you, in- 
stead of being conformed to it. 

In all communities temptations to go 
wrong are manifold. In the cities, per- 
haps, they are most enticing. To the 
cities, great or small, the young man 
25 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

gravitates in these days. The old farm 
has lost its attraction. The old simple 
country life has to a great extent passed 
away, and is passing more rapidly every 
year. We may regret this, and we may 
be wrong in our lament, for the revela- 
tion of God about man begins with 
him in a garden, and utters its last note 
in a walled city. The world of the 
future is to be urban, not rural. This 
comes about, not by whim, but through 
some law of human development. It is 
true that God made the country, and 
man made the town. But it must be 
equally true that God intended man to 
build cities, as well as to till the soil. 
The race has the divine commission to 
subdue the earth. That cannot mean 
merely to cut down forests and to plant 
corn and potatoes. It means coal min- 
ing, banking, insurance, as well. It 
means art and culture, the Sistine Ma- 
26 



His Surroundings 



donna and the plays of Shakespeare. 
For the parable of the Tower of Babel 
is told, not against the gathering to- 
gether of people in one place, but against 
their massing for wrong purposes. It 
is barren twaddle that bids the lad to 
stay on the farm. The boy from the 
farm and the village, by way of the 
town and city, has been the avatar of 
most that is best and finest in our 
civilization. 

" The city would have died out, rotted 
and exploded long ago," says Emerson, 
"but that it was re-enforced from the 
fields. It is only country which came 
to town day before yesterday that is city 
and country to-day." 

Whether we approve or not, the evo- 
lution of civilization is marked by the 
dwindling of the rural and the expan- 
sion of the urban population. 

The young man in the city, whether 
27 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

from the country or to the manner born, 
is the unsolved problem of tomorrow. 

As he stands in the market place, 
where he is to make and sell his 
wares, he is surrounded by vice and 
folly. Sometimes they are masked, 
sometimes they are flaunted openly. 
They are often hidden under the garb 
of art, and music, and innocent rec- 
reation. They appeal to the surging 
tide of mental and physical life that 
rises and falls in the young man's 
soul, and they entice him by the 
subtle and seductive plea that it 
becomes his free manhood to see life. 

It is hardly necessary to enumerate 
the view points. 

Before the pits of moral confusion 
and darkness, the lights glitter and 
banners wave. Parents need not lay 
the flattering unction to their souls 
that their fair-faced boys do not see 
28 



His Surroundings 



and are not enticed. It is impossible 
that the knowledge of evil should be 
kept from them. 

Moreover, it is the sublimity of folly 
to declare to young men that there is 
no pleasure in evil. Pleasure forms its 
chief attraction. That is what the 
young man seeks and finds. When 
he fares forth to see life, he takes the 
journey because of the stirring of his 
passions and desires. He is like the 
prodigal, who wanted to have his own 
way because it was novel and exciting. 
The first taste of many evil things is 
very pleasant to the youth, and not 
the least attraction about it is, that 
he is his own master and is partaking 
of the fruit of his own choice. 

There are two things the young man 
may consider now as he dwells upon 
29 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

the pleasures of what the tempter calls 
"life." And even the youngest man 
must admit that middle age has had 
more experience in the world than 
himself. 

i. He goes in for this life because 
it is pleasant and agreeable. I admit 
that it is, — to a certain part of his 
nature, and for a while, — but these 
are very important qualifications. 

It is the sensual, the animal part of 
him that is ministered to. To say 
nothing of the spiritual part of a man, 
no one will contend that the low 
pleasures of " young men about town," 
as they are called, the pleasures that 
invite clean young fellow r s with the 
flattering appeal that they make him 
manly, have any stimulus for his in- 
tellectual life. 

But the young man resents the ad- 
jective. Why " low " pleasures ? 
30 



His Surroundings 



You have a right to a fair answer. 
The adjective " low," in this connec- 
tion, has a very definite meaning. It 
applies to that part of a man by 
w T hich he is linked with the animal. 
For linked with them we are. We 
are all made of the dust of the earth. 
The beast instinct is in us all. The 
dominion given to man on the earth 
included the subjection of his lower 
to his higher self. 

I use the adjective "low" just ex- 
actly where any honest young man 
would use it. 

Any atmosphere that lowers the 
tone of the mind, that brushes the 
bloom from the moral life, that en- 
feebles the body, is low. 

Any atmosphere that hinders purity 
of thought or cleanliness of speech 
is low. 

And we are all sufficiently warned 
3i 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

where this mephitic air abides. We 
need but to read the comments of the 
daily press, which is apt to suffer long 
before it speaks out, or to glance at 
the flaunting posters of the billboards, 
to know whence this sordid and un- 
clean hell of animal passions in all 
their grossness are appealed to and 
stirred up. 

In that atmosphere, where the in- 
stincts of the animal are baited for 
and ministered to, and where the open 
bid is made for the man to descend 
to the level of the masterless dogs 
that roam the street, in that atmos- 
phere, it seems to me, the moralist 
finds justification for use of the word 
" low " in connection with the pleas- 
ures of seeing life, as that phrase is 
understood. 

Plain w r ords ! 

I mean to be plain. There is no use 
32 



His Surroundings 



in talking generalities. We must re- 
duce this plea of seeing life to its 
lowest terms to know just what is 
involved, if we are to handle the 
problem of the young man's life at 
all helpfully. Water gruel has its 
place in the economy of nature, but 
when the heart action is low we do 
not inject water gruel. 

You, O mother, will resent this 
for your son, and if your tender lips 
could frame some such expression as 
" brutal cynic," it would doubtless be 
a literal translation of your thought. 
Your son knows better. Blessed be 
that beautiful mother trust in her off- 
spring! Let us down on our knees, 
and kiss the hem of her garment. 
That trust is the one cord which, 
stretched to its utmost tension again 
and again, never quite breaks, and is 
often the only thread by which the 
3 33 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

child finds his way out of the laby- 
rinth of evil back to the bosom on 
which his innocent face lay long ago, 
to sob out his sorrow and repentance. 
But, mothers, you know little indeed 
of that child you have brought into 
the world, if you think that he may 
not be touched by the world's evil. 

Do not strive to draw a veil over what 
is outside the home circle, in the mar- 
ket place, where your boy must work out 
the problem of his life. He must come 
in contact with it. To pass through it 
unscathed, he must know what it is that 
beckons with such alluring gestures. 
Let him know that there is a part of 
him which must be kept under, or it 
will paralyze that part of him which is 
kin with God. 

The surroundings he chooses will 
help or hinder. The law of environ- 
ment is the law of formation. Nourish 
34 



His Surroundings 



the animal and the animal grows. The 
fruits of the tree of disobedience are 
pleasant to the taste and good for food, 
and the serpent has a wily tongue. 

In the stable we can expect nothing 
but stable talk and stable manners. 
That is law. A sane man does not wal- 
low in the gutter for the benefit of a 
surf bath. So, young man, however 
strong you feel yourself to be, however 
sincere your effort towards generous 
manhood, you are, to say the very least, 
endangering that manhood by surround- 
ing yourself with the things that appeal 
to your lower instincts. It is pleasant 
at first, and you have your reward, such 
as it is. But there is another limitation 
which only the experience of yourself or 
others can prove. 

2. Indulgence in merely physical and 
animal pleasures palls after a time. It 
does not offer the same attractions, 
35 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

and it ceases to minister to a satiated 
taste. 

# 

" On that hard Pagan world, disgust 
And secret loathing fell ; 
Deep weariness and sated lust 
Made human life a hell. 

" In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, 
The Roman noble lay ; 
He drove abroad in furious guise 
Along the Appian Way. 

" He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, 
And crowned his head with flowers ; 
No easier nor no quicker passed 
The impracticable hours." 

This is true of the modern Anglo- 
Saxon as of the ancient Roman. Many 
a man will recognize the picture. 

Do you think that you can turn easily 
from this life to other and better things ? 
You have doubtless been led by unmor- 
alists in literature and in life to treat 



His Surroundings 



rather lightly this sowing of wild oats, 
as it is called. There is a flippantly 
accepted maxim that every young man of 
spirit is expected to scatter broadcast in 
the field of life all that is fine and pre- 
cious in him, and then suddenly turn 
over a new leaf. 

Leaves in the book of life are not 
turned as easily as the leaves of a novel. 
It is a divine law that seed springs up 
and bears fruit after its kind. Many a 
man of middle age to-day groans under 
the burden and quality of his harvest. 
With great effort and at agonizing cost 
he may have thrown off the habits of 
an ill-used youth, but the marks are 
upon him, and the wounds bleed afresh 
from time to time. 

The price the young man pays for 

seeing life, which means low life, is that 

he loses his power of appreciating or 

assimilating the higher life. The pleas- 

37 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

ures of the intellect, refined recreation, 
the society of good women, — these are 
closed to him. The surroundings a 
man first chooses afterwards choose 
him, and when he has finally exhausted 
them and turns away, either in repent- 
ance or in search of some new thing, he 
finds that he is a slave, shackled, after 
the manner of an old-time punishment, 
to a dead body. 

# 

And it is just as easy and just as 
pleasant in the beginning of life, under 
wise direction, to surround one's self 
with good as with evil. A young man 
may find — as many can testify — pure 
and joyous hours in healthy places, with 
clean surroundings. He may charm his 
animal by fine music, lead him captive by 
noble art, divert his strength to glorious 
service. There is as much legitimate 
38 



His Surroundings 



and pleasurable excitement in the pur- 
suit of high things as of low. 

To see life with clearest vision is to 
know the lives of the worlds heroes, 
leaders, saints. It is to walk and talk 
with the worthies of literature, and to 
commune with the sons of song. It is 
to come under the influence of gracious 
womanhood, and to be familiar with 
happy homes. This is the world a man 
who strives after truth should know in 
his youth. It is the true world. It has 
foundations. If, in this or any hour, you 
are tempted to yield to the fascinations of 
the underworld or the half world, reflect 
that it is under and half, and that you are 
maiming, not expanding, yourself by con- 
forming even for a time to its boundaries. 

# # 

It is far from my purpose to devote 
these pages to copybook mottoes, but 
39 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

the fact stares us in the face that some 
old saws are trite and have grown com- 
monplace to the eye and ear because 
they are true. A man is known by the 
company he keeps. That environment 
which you bring up about you, or in 
which you are most often found, marks 
you in the community. You cannot 
keep your animal down if you feed him 
on the food for which his mouth is 
agape. The tiger growls and the ape 
chatters through your mind and actions, 
when you are past noticing it. A young 
man is better known by his neighbors 
than he ever dreams. They judge him 
by the sort of surroundings he chooses, 
the places he frequents, the comrades 
he consorts with, the recreations he 
takes. 

Sometimes you wonder that you do 
not " get on." Other men advance faster 
than you. You are told that your ser- 
40 



His Surroundings 



vices will be dispensed with. And this 
when, so far as you know, you are doing 
as good work as you are capable. You 
think people are down on you, and com- 
plain bitterly that you have no chance 
in life. Other things often bring this 
about, for which you are usually respon- 
sible also, but this matter of your self- 
chosen environment is very often the 
cause. Whatever a merchant or profes- 
sional man, having come to years of 
maturity, may choose to do, he will not 
ordinarily run like risks with his em- 
ployees. Experientia docens. He may 
bet on the races, but if he knows you 
frequent, however infrequently, the pool 
rooms, he will not trust his affairs with 
you. If you spend time and money in 
the " half world," he knows what you are 
seeking in exchange, and he knows also 
that it is a waste of his time, and reflects 
that at some time it may be at his ex- 
4i 



The Young Man in Modern Life 



pense. That is why some young men 
do not get on. 

During many years of contact with 
all sorts and conditions of young men, 
I have seen not a few lives go to ruin 
because it was thought that the broad, 
road of yielding to every sensual desire 
was the only way to see life. 






Now, in your youth, you may make 
your surroundings what you will, helps 
and inspirations to a fair and noble man- 
hood, or a slough in which the lower 
nature drags you down to wallow. When 
you reach that level and grow sick of 
it, your life will starve slowly out ; no 
man gives unto you, because no man can 
give unto you ; you have exhausted the 
resources of the animal. 

You may get back to your own place 
as the prodigal son. But how do you 
42 



His Surroundings 



know you will? And the way back is 
not easy, but hard. 

When to-day tempts to spend your all 
upon to-day, remember that to-morrow 
is before you, and that to-morrow lasts 
when to-day dies. 



43 



Ill 

HIS WORK 

MANY a young man thinks that 
if he can somehow escape 
work, he can escape trouble 
and hardship. Yet, it is the experience 
of most of us who have been standing in 
the market place for years, that work is 
almost the only escape from trouble; 
the great sweetener of life's bitterness; 
the mystery of God's way with a man 
in the world, by which he transmutes 
sorrow into joy, tears into laughter, 
curses into blessings. 

Labor, of one sort or another, is the 
only legitimate mode of man's existence 
on the earth, which it was his first 
supreme commission to subdue and 
dominate. An idler is worse than an 
44 



His Work 



ordinary encumbrance, for of these, 
oftentimes, good fertilizers are made. 
The idler, fluttering about to escape 
work in the busy world, endures more 
hardness than the toiler, but it is not 
a healthful or honest hardness, besides 
being barren. The idler, whether spend- 
ing the money which others have earned 
on what he calls pleasure, or tramping 
from place to place avoiding dogs and 
jails, is in the way. He shows no cause 
why he should exist at all. 

When it dawned upon man's early 
consciousness that the Lord God had 
given him a splendid heritage of which 
he could only be worthy through the 
sweat of his brow, it was vaguely borne 
in upon him that the earth was endowed 
with divine meaning for him. Labor is 
the only way of appropriating and mak- 
ing his own this meaning. Labor is of 
many sorts and kinds. The brain, the 
45 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

hand, the heart, the student, the carpen- 
ter, the mother, are all drawn upon, 
but it is always and only labor, from 
the peasant digging potatoes out of 
the ground, to the poet interpreting the 
music of the spheres. 

Therefore when a young man faces 
the world to choose his life work, let 
him not complain that labor is the in- 
heritance of the sons of men. Let no 
blatant demagogic cant, nor envious 
thought, nor momentary overpressure, 
nor superciliousness in the mien of the 
wealthy or cultured, taint him with the 
idea that labor of any sort, if honest, 
can be degrading. 

The dignity of labor is the dignity of 
living. 

# 

Assuming that the young man re- 
alizes that in work of some sort only, 
46 



His Work 



can he justify his creation, either to 
himself or to his creator, I will assume 
also that he is determined to take 
the highest possible rank as a laborer, 
to make the best of his powers. In 
other words, he means to succeed in 
life. 

A young man without ambition is an 
anomaly. A young man who does not 
hope to reach the topmost round, un- 
less hampered by conditions he cannot 
control, such as ill health, is not normal. 
Ill health, or physical limitations even, 
need not and do not always act as bars 
to manly achievements. I knew a blind 
man who studied medicine through 
others' eyes, and took a high stand on 
examination. 

A right ambition is the salt of youth. 

But take heed of ambitious thoughts 

when unaccompanied by ambitious 

efforts to carry them into action. Here- 

47 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

in lies a greater danger to youth, to 
highly gifted youth especially. 

When a farmer desires a corn harvest 
or a potato crop, he does not spend 
his springtime enlarging his bin, and 
barns, and swelling with pride over the 
fact that he is a farmer. He sows and 
plants and hoes and cultivates, and then 
reaps and digs and gathers in his har- 
vest, — not without cost. 

What would be counted folly in the 
farmer is often the uttermost wisdom of 
the young man. He would be a poet, 
but scorns the drudgery of the school- 
room ; he would be an artist, and thinks 
it unnecessary to spend hours learning 
to draw lines and cubes and circles. 
He thinks he has it " in him " to write 
dramas well up to the Elizabethan 
standard, and paint pictures for the line 
of the salon, and is famous and feted 
by his fellows — in his mind's eye — 
48 



His Work 



long before he has done one hour's 
real labor with pen or brush. The 
farmer might as well say that it is in 
the ground to produce harvests, and 
consider it not worth while to use 
plough, harrow, or hoe. 

Elsewhere I have maintained the 
cause of the dreamer of dreams. He 
has his place in the world and his hour 
in time. But every dreamer must 
awake. He must not linger in the sen- 
suous pleasure of thought. Thought 
will rot as well as matter. Irresolution 
is a vicious menace to achievement 
The man, like the seed germ, will only 
bear fruit as he lays hold upon and uses 
concretely his environment. 

In the heart of the bulb under ground 
lies the dream of the stately lily, as in 
the heart of the true man, the faith of 
a splendid manhood. Both may die. 
Neither the earthly stains and grime of 
4 49 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

bursting life, nor the sweat of a man's 
brow, seem glorious in themselves. But 
without them cometh not the flower nor 
the man. 

There are two snare words, under 
which lie in wait serious temptations for 
the young man to play the trifler with 
life, — " genius " and "luck." 

Of course, men are gifted after differ- 
ent sorts. The scale of human endow- 
ment is wide and varied. It ranges 
from the dull heaviness below the line 
of the average, to the thrilling glory of 
the exceptional highest note of human 
utterance. 

By a whim of human thought, we 
count him only the genius who sings to 
the stars, and we neglect the masses of 
men, plodding the highways and byways 
or delving in the bowels of the earth. 

I do not mean to say that the Spirit 
of God does not flood some souls with 
5o 



His Work 



a clearer apprehension of God's law and 
will than others. There are selected 
men. St. Paul, Loyola, Cromwell ! Is 
there any known human law for the pro- 
duction of a Shakespeare from his sur- 
roundings, or a Darwin at the appointed 
time ? 

I do not underrate the man of genius 
when I say that he is, after all, a product 
of the sod. But it is not the few, but 
the great mass of men who are gifted. 
Each man is gifted to do the work he is 
called into the world to do. 

Not infrequently the young man 
looks with envious eyes upon his neigh- 
bor who paints a great picture, writes a 
great poem, or invents a great machine. 
He laments that others have a genius 
which he has not, and dreams of what 
fine things he would accomplish were 
he endowed in like fashion. 

Now the process of becoming a genius 
5i 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

is hidden from the eye of man. The 
genius who has hitched his wagon to a 
star cannot impart his working hypothe- 
sis, because he is unconscious of any other 
rule than that which the discontented 
looker-on despises as being common, — in- 
finite patience, infinite pains, infinite hard 
work. The man who is hailed as a genius, 
if questioned, would not tell of long years 
of lying in wait for an inspiration that 
finally found him in some mighty moment 
with power to do and to be. He would 
rather tell of hours and days and months 
and years of toilsome labor, disappointing, 
discouraging, unrequited. And when 
one day he looks upon his accomplished 
task, and can say, "behold, it is very 
good/' he knows, better than any one 
else, that his achievement is something 
which did not come to him from with- 
out, but something from within, which 
would never have taken form and shape, 
52 



His Work 



but for steadfast labor of hand and 
brain. 

The man who would wear the halo of 
genius must learn to serve, and suffer, 
and to toil. When the grateful genera- 
tion crowns him amidst hosannas, it 
will not be the market place value, or 
applause, he will be thinking of, but 
the joy of achievement. 

# 

Akin to the habit of pining for genius 
is the tendency to wait for fitting sur- 
roundings, to linger in one's limitations 
of time and space, to dream of oppor- 
tunities, to allege that it is impossible 
to achieve success with the means at 
command. 

When a young man has this idea, let 
him ask himself whether he does not 
mean, it is impossible to achieve success 
easily. 

53 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

If ease, with freedom from care, is a 
fair object of life, it is exemplified in 
Tom sitting on a cracker barrel in a 
country store wondering how Bill is 
able to go through college. 

Achievement comes through struggle 
with, and victory over, one's surround- 
ings. A man is set in a certain station 
of life, and while he occupies it he is 
called upon to lay all things under con- 
tribution, not to wait until all things 
arrange themselves in such combinations 
as suit his convenience. The problem 
of first importance for you to settle, 
young man, is, not how you might act 
under other circumstances, but how you 
ought to act under the circumstances 
which are yours, and which you are 
bound to believe is the condition under 
which you are called upon to work. 

I said above that every man is gifted 
to do the thing he was put in the world 
54 



His Work 



to do. How have you done the things 
at hand, "the next thynge," and have 
you done it to the very best of your ca- 
pacity ? Are you among the first in the 
work you found to be yours, when you 
came to the knowledge that you must 
work and not sit on a cracker barrel 
whittling sticks. 

If you can answer sincerely in the 
affirmative, then you have the right to 
look up at the face of God and ask him 
to lead you on ; if it is good for you and 
him and others that you should go on 
— and not otherwise. 

For while men jump gaps, God bridges 
them. An earthly promotion does not 
always mean fitness, but a promotion at 
God's hand can mean nothing else. He, 
with all the treasures of the universe at 
command, is the great Economist. 

Think it over, young man, whether 
you sit in the seat of the cracker barrel 
55 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

philosopher, or are dodging the drudg- 
ery of school and college routine, or 
measuring your work by the hands of 
the clock, think it over, and realize that 
it is better for you to discover for your- 
self, than that others should discover for 
you, that your lamentation over those 
more highly gifted than yourself, is 
merely your protest against hard work. 

Another snare word not infrequently 
on the lips of men is "luck." They 
complain of the good luck of others who 
succeed, and their own ill luck which 
keeps them down. 

When a man doubts that he is part 
animal, and resents the Darwinian hy- 
pothesis, let him reflect quietly upon that 
human tendency to rejoice secretly over 
the failures and disasters, and to be en- 
vious over the successes and victories, 
56 



His Work 



of his fellows. He is not far removed 
in these unheroic moments, from the bit- 
ing and snarling of the brutes which 
raven with tooth and claw for advan- 
tage. And when he sulks over what he 
calls the good luck of another and his 
own evil luck, he is a very foolish 
animal indeed. 

Now there is such a thing as luck ; a 
real bolt from the blue; a sudden and 
unexpected visitation of fortune. But 
how often are these fiery trials of temp- 
tation ! 

I do not mean to exaggerate, and can 
only give the experience of my own ob- 
servations of a generation, when I say 
that the windfall is more of a curse 
than a blessing. The test of the Ameri- 
can oil fields will, I expect, be ample 
proof of this statement. Few poor men 
can any more appreciate and use the re- 
sponsibility of sudden wealth than a 
57 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

blind man, who for the first time sees, 
can interpret and enjoy, the gorgeous 
glory of a sunset. To fall up is often 
as disastrous as to fall down. 

# # 
# 

Of course, young man, you may not 
agree with this. Even if you admit the 
general principle, which is hard for 
youth to do, you know that, in your in- 
dividual case, you can take care of, and 
use to the best advantage, any gift that 
the goddess of Good Luck will bestow 
upon you, — at least, you are willing to 
run the risk. So we will concede your 
point of view, for the sake of bringing 
you face to face with another fact in- 
volved in this gospel of windfall which 
saps many a vigorous heart and mind. 

Windfalls of good fortune are not 
like windfalls in an apple orchard. 
They are very few and far between. 
58 



His Work 



Just as civilization can, on the whole, 
take care of its own waste, so, on the 
whole, can society deal with the prob- 
lems involved in her " lucky " members. 

But what shall be said of the habit of 
waiting for a stroke of luck, to begin or 
to carry on properly the purpose and 
task of life ? 

I am afraid that the wit of Micawber 
often blinds our eyes to the pitiful pathos 
of his hopes and dreams. 

What shall be said of the young man 
who contents himself with poor and 
trifling work, disparaging the smallness 
and commonplaceness of his daily task, 
because he has fixed his fine eyes on 
the Africa of some great stroke of luck 
which is to bring money and fame and 
freedom from work ? 

It is the paralysis of life. 

It is a state of utter blindness to the 
heavenly vision, of utter deafness to the 
59 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

heavenly voice, which summons every 
man on this earth to do something, or to 
rot back into the soil from whence he 
came. 

If your eyes are fixed upon something 
which may come to-morrow, unconnected 
with the efforts you are or ought to be 
putting forth to-day, you have missed 
the whole meaning of life. A man is 
not made to possess things for himself, 
but to be an instrument of the Divine, 
in spreading his kingdom of truth, and 
carrying out his great purpose. 

If he makes this his first and suprem- 
est work, if he enters into the meaning 
of his being made in the image of God, 
the divine joy of toil will be unmixed 
with any earthly dissatisfaction. He 
will work at his own task with a glad- 
ness in his heart that will lift him on the 
wings of the morning, and this whether 
men cry " Hosanna," or " Crucify him." 
60 



His Work 



It must be admitted that the young 
man is sorely tempted by the gospel of 
windfall in these early days of the new 
century. 

Success in life has become identified, 
not with the greatness of the man, but 
with the greatness of his fortune. A 
magnate in oil or steel is the model 
oftenest in the young man's eyes. The 
round of the shop and desk seems dull 
and sordid, and, at their best, poorly paid, 
in comparison with the excitement of 
speculation, and the fortunes lost and 
won on a turn in the market place. 

The luck involved in speculation has a 
dangerous glamour because it wears the 
garments of legitimacy. I will not enter 
upon the big question of the morals of 
speculation. I am told by men who 
speak from a full knowledge of market 
place methods, of which I am compara- 
tively ignorant, that speculation is the 
6i 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

life of commerce, and that the buying 
and selling of things that do not exist is 
a genuine necessity in the commercial 
world. 

I cannot combat what I know little 
about, and I want these pages to teach 
young men, among other things, that 
reckless characterization of men and 
motives and methods of which we know 
only by hearsay, is neither honest, fair, 
nor productive of the slightest good. 

But I am perfectly within my province 
in declaring that the speculative habit is 
a curse to the young man with his work 
to do. It unfits him for his avocation, 
which is to be a producer of some sort. 
No man has a divine call to stand in the 
market place waiting for something to 
turn up, but to turn up something. 

The divine law, illustrated by ages of 
62 



His Work 



human application, is that a man shall 
live in the sweat of his own brow, not in 
the sweat or the tears of his neighbor. 

When the young man permits the 
element of luck, under any one of its 
specious forms, to become a factor in 
the accomplishment of his life work, he 
is crippled from that hour. 

There is a great deal of talk concern- 
ing " Napoleons " of finance and " kings " 
of the wheat pit, but it is significant how 
short their reigns are, and how swiftly the 
dynasties change. Yet these rocket men 
are often lures to the young man who 
sighs for his own opportunity. He scans 
the heavens for his lucky star. There is 
no such thing. The divine law of domi- 
nation and increase is, that a man shall 
follow the order of the universe and ad- 
vance from strength, to strength, by toil, 
63 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

and often at cost. Avoid the crime, for 
crime it is against your manhood, of trust- 
ing to luck. It will snare you in the end. 

I have spoken seriously of these im- 
pediments that you may think upon 
them and face the world with some idea 
of the temptations that are lying in wait. 
You will have to bruise yourself a bit in 
working out your own salvation, and I 
cannot promise that angel hands will lift 
you over the rough places, even though 
you seek the best things in the best way. 
It is always per aspera ad astra. 

But there are one or two things to be 
added, which, if the experience of others 
avails anything, may be positively helpful 
in your vocation. 

So far as choice lies open to you, 
choose your life work where your taste 
as well as your capacity lies. 
64 



His Work 



Remember that you are not an atom 
obeying some mechanical law of affinity, 
but a son of God, who has endowed you 
with his own life, to be lived under 
obedience to his higher law. Each one 
of us has a heavenly vision, if he can 
only lift his eyes from the things that 
fascinate his earthly vision long enough 
to see and understand. Desire and ca- 
pacity are certain indications of power. 
Desire is not whim or momentary pas- 
sion. Almost every boy wants to go to 
sea, or to go upon the stage, or to be a 
hermit, or something of that sort. These 
are usually passing phases of the im- 
aginative faculty working through the 
untrained intelligence. Now and then 
we have an infant phenomenon who is 
unmistakably pointed towards his des- 
tiny from the nursery. But he is a rare 
child who knows the potency of his 
manhood. 

5 65 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

The desire of a youth's soul is not 
known even to himself until he has 
tasted many a mess of pottage. Home 
training, school discipline, acquaintance 
with men and books, are all necessary in 
most cases to bring out the real mission 
of the growing manhood. Parents are 
often unwise in their insistence upon a 
certain especial calling for their sons. 

It is not the less unwisdom because 
dictated by love. The old custom of 
our English forefathers of sending one 
son into the navy, and the next into the 
army, and another into the church, made 
many a poor sailor, soldier, and parson. 
The fond devotion of many a mother 
sealing her boy to the service of the 
sacred ministry from his infancy is not 
a thing to be sneered at. Many a Han- 
nah has so brought up many a Samuel. 
But while the desire of mother and son 
may be thus noble and lofty, they must 
66 



His Work 



look on the other side of the heavenly 
vision to see if Samuel has the capacity 
to serve. Else his fate may be the fate 
of the sons of Eli. 

Natural capacity is as clear a message 
from God as the earth affords. This is 
the first, supremest indication of voca- 
tion. That once determined, let the 
choice be guided by taste and love. 

Many a man learns his mistake too 
late in life to make a change. It is piti- 
ful, but he is thenceforth chained like a 
galley slave to a task he must do, while 
conscious of another life in which he 
might have worked with buoyant heart. 
The keenest joy of life is to that man 
who gets his bread and butter in the 
tasks that are a delight. Almost the 
bitterest experience is to be forced to 
do the opposite. 

It follows that mere money getting is 
not the most satisfactory among life's 
67 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

occupations. A man confessed to me 
not long since, that he would willingly 
give up his wealth and all that it meant 
to him in the way of luxury to feel the 
joy of the surgeon in the successful 
achievement of a difficult operation. 
He had exactly the temperament, the 
steadiness, the persistence, the thirst for 
accuracy in the smallest details, and the 
love of his kind, which would have made 
him successful in that vocation. Cir- 
cumstances had prevented his adoption 
of the work of his choice, when he might 
have availed himself of it. It was now 
too late. He is a successful man as 
the world counts success, but not in the 
higher way he looks at it. 

Wealth is not to be despised. We do 
not find many men inveighing against 
the capitalist, if they are stockholders 
and have laid up bonds in bank vaults. 
Wealth is one of the forces of the higher 
68 



His Work 



life. But to be rich is not the best thing 
a man can desire. 

Therefore, young men, I repeat, it is 
better for you to be a painter with little 
money, a teacher with less, or a strug- 
gling student all your life, with none at 
all, if your taste and capacity lie along 
those lines, than to be just rich. The 
two need not be, and, indeed, are not 
always divorced. Some few men are 
doubtless so pleasantly absorbed in 
money getting that it is its own reward. 
But to how few does this come compared 
with the many whose manual or in- 
tellectual occupation is a joy in itself 
apart from its results! 

Not infrequently, however, it is not 

the selection by parents, nor the choice 

of one's self, that finds the young man in 

a calling which, if he does not positively 

69 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

dislike, he can have no enthusiasm in fol- 
lowing. Hard circumstances, limited op- 
portunities, imperious necessity, are the 
arbiters of many a young man's destiny. 

The bustling civilization of the twen- 
tieth century demands all sorts and con- 
ditions of task work which all have 
their divine meaning. The earthworm 
is not so brilliant as the bird of paradise, 
but it has its underground task to do, 
an important and wonderful task. 

What may be said for the encourage- 
ment of the man who finds himself har- 
nessed to a task by which he earns a 
competence, but which is a task and 
nothing more ? 

His is by no means a hopeless out- 
look. He may have a hobby. 

# 

I hope my contention will not be 
thought too frivolous, when I strive to 

70 



His Work 



set before you the joys and uses of 
hobbies. Hobbies are sometimes dis- 
credited by the unthinking. Of course, 
if a man neglects his work to ride a 
hobby, he is not a true man, and these 
words are not for him. But if a man 
has, as most of us have, some time in 
addition to the hours demanded for the 
proper performance of his daily work, 
let him lead out to gentle exercise the 
hobby of his taste. 

By a hobby I do not mean a mere 
ridiculous whimsy. A hobby, properly 
considered, is a dignified pursuit. The 
fundamental distinction between a hobby 
and an avocation is, that your avocation 
rides you, while you ride your hobby. 

Avocation is usually bread and butter. 
Hobbies are appetizers. When the two 
are identical, and you have the supreme 

n 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

joy of earning the wages for life's needs 
in pursuit of the thing you like best, get 
another hobby. 

In other words, we should have some 
interest in life outside the treadmill of 
the daily task. It is good for any man ; 
it is vitally necessary to the man whose 
work is uncongenial. 

Your hobby may lead you to nature ; 
it was a country parson's hobby that 
gave to literature the classic " Natural 
History " of Selbourne. It may invite 
you into the realm of sport; out of the 
rural rambles of a London haberdasher 
came the " Compleat Angler." It ought 
to take you entirely away from your 
daily routine, as the great mathematician 
left his classroom and conic sections, 
to wander with Alice in Wonderland 
and to burble with the Boogum and the 
Jabberwock. 

For even a hobby ought not to be 
72 



His Work 



mere play. Charles Kingsley's hobby 
was history, and from it came such joys 
to the world as " Hypatia," " Hereward," 
and " Westward Ho ! " I do not mean, 
of course, that one must be a poet, a 
novelist, or an historian to justify his 
hobby riding. If it is the right sort 
it will not be the waste, but the en- 
richment of life, whether productive 
or not. 

What is the advantage ? 

It prevents narrowness. The ten- 
dency of this age is more and more 
towards specialization. The lawyer stud- 
ies one branch of the law. The physi- 
cian studies one department of medicine 
or surgery. No one man makes a whole 
pin any longer. This specialization 
forces men into narrowness of thought, 
unless there be a corrective. 

It is not good for a lawyer, only to 
read law. It is not good for the mer- 
73 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

chant to consult no books but his 
account books, and no literature but 
prices current. The man who sticks in 
a little corner, is not as efficient in that 
corner, as though he took walks abroad 
and breathed in a different air. The 
man who sees one thing only loses the 
capacity of wider vision. Routine, even 
in the occupation w r e love and live by, 
palls after a time. We grow to loathe 
the uninterrupted trivial round and com- 
mon task. And we ought to. The 
corrective of this is to have some other 
interest. 

Let it be bugs or books ; fishing or 
photography; on land or water; to be 
followed in the woods, or to be pursued 
in the library: but let it be some oc- 
cupation in which you may, from being 
a humble disciple, grow to become a 
master. 

Man does not live by bread alone. 
74 



His Work 



The hobby will keep you from tempta- 
tion. It will infallibly broaden your 
life. It will sweeten hours that might 
else be bitter, and in its indulgence you 
will find fresh springs of life. 

After the dust and the heat and the 
burden of the long days toil, the hobby 
will be like the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land. 

# 

Akin to this is another thing I would 
press upon your attention. Your work 
in this world will never quite be the best, 
unless you cultivate an interest in your 
fellow-men and in causes that help on 
the world, — without the rewards of the 
market place. 

In the market place there are things 

not for sale. The architecture of the 

buildings; the fountains sending up 

their streams; the statues gracing and 

75 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

lending beauty to niche and corridor, 
— these are for all. 

So in the true man's life there are 
productions of hand, brain, and heart 
not for sale. Man is not always a mer- 
chant, nor all he carries merchandise. 

Remember that a part of your earthly 
work must always be without earthly re- 
ward, or else you make of yourself the 
shrivelled slave of wages and of time. 
You will be called upon to give of your- 
self in service, to society, to the church, 
and to the nation, not only without 
compensation, but at cost. 

If you would rise to the full height of 
your manhood, you will give this ser- 
vice voluntarily, cheerfully, loyally. This 
is patriotism. This is manhood. 

By shirking it you may have more 
money and more time, but there will be 
less room in your soul to enjoy the one 
or use the other. 

7 6 



IV 

HIS AMUSEMENTS 

LIFE is parti-colored. Tragedy 
and comedy are next each 
other and sometimes overlap. 
The human demands the tonic of hap- 
piness as well as of sorrow. Mind and 
body need change, not in abrupt cata- 
racts, but in a tidal rise and fall. Dull- 
ness is not goodness. Therefore, every 
healthful life plan should allow for 
amusement and recreation, and the ra- 
tional man will look upon the joyous 
side of life, and extract food for laughter 
and song, not stealthily or with apologies, 
but because it is his divine right. 

And the hours of purest joy are those 
of youth. Indian summer has its com- 
77 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

pensations, and autumn its peace, but 
the fun that maketh glad the heart is 
found in the springtime. A goodly 
number of men fall on the evil days of 
the Preacher, the days of stress or rou- 
tine, and say they have no pleasure in 
them. We need to drink of the chalice 
of joy while we can, ere those days 
come when we shall be obliged to drain 
the dregs of discipline. 

There used to be Puritan schemes of 
life, and doubtless are now, — drawn up 
by good men who love God and, in 
their own way, their fellows, — which 
exclude pleasure as a snare and a menace 
to the working out of one's salvation. 
Such a theory of life is irrational and in- 
human, impossible and unphilosophical. 
The notable distinction between man 
and the lower animals is that man prays 
and laughs. 

# 

78 



His Amusements 



The amusements of a young man are 
both indices of character and influences 
of moulding power. Because they are 
ordinarily his own free choice, they not 
only mark the man as he is, but shape 
the man as he is to be. 

Amusements conceal more tempta- 
tions than work and all the rest of his 
environment. They should be as care- 
fully watched and guarded as the food 
he eats. The devil seems to have a 
great many channels of approach, but 
for choice he probably prefers the 
paths that are pleasant to his victims. 
A young man's amusements may minis- 
ter to his higher or his lower life. It is 
largely through his choice of them that 
he begins to serve God or the devil. 

In these days, not degenerate, but 
very different from the days of our 
79 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

fathers, when athletics (to take one 
form of amusement) have been ex- 
alted among the humanities, and a 
professor thereof adorns the faculty of 
arts, the first reflection which it is borne 
in on me to make is, that the young man 
needs to cultivate a sense of proportion 
with reference to his amusements. 

They should have their due share of 
time and income, but they should not 
be allowed to draw too heavily upon 
either. 

Fortunately for the young man who 
has a sane conception of life, he has not 
time on his hands to overindulge him- 
self. The demands of his business, or 
profession, or task work of whatever 
sort, erect barriers between cultivated 
fields and waste spots. The merest 
everyday prudence limits one's play 
time. And this is evidently just. Rec- 
reation is the dessert of life, not the 
80 



His Amusements 



roast beef. The business of life is 
labor. Relaxation from labor is for 
the refreshment and stimulus of men, 
that they may perform their part of the 
world's work. 

But there is always a tendency among 
young men to encroach upon the serious 
business of life with its lighter desires. 
Usually this is because he does not un- 
derstand yet how serious life is, and 
that he is building the castle for his 
soul to-morrow,, while he thinks he is 
but passing his time between daylight 
and dark. 

I repeat, therefore, that amusements, 
important factor of growth as they are, 
should be cultivated with a degree of 
proportion. 

Especially must this be the law of a 
young man whose way is yet to be made 
in the world, whose achievements are 
before him, whose castle is not built 
6 81 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

Middle age and old age have earned, 
if they have been faithful, a greater 
number of hours and a larger share of 
the income for relaxation. The young 
man is a poor creature if he discounts 
this future. 

Young men in the city, whose social 
position is of a certain grade, but whose 
incomes are limited by their years and 
inexperience, are sorely tempted to live 
beyond their means, which is the most 
subtle sin of the calendar and the pro- 
lific parent of many others. 

The chief work of the law student is 
law, of the medical student is medicine. 
They are not often hampered by the 
hours that confine the business student 
to the store under an employers eyes. 
But their sense of honor ought to stand 
in the place of fixed periods. 

If we see A spending his afternoons 
on the golf links, or B with a rowing 
82 



His Amusements 



club, or C with a bicycle, it would not 
be human if we did not wish we might 
join them. But we must realize that if 
they are there honestly, they have earned 
the time, or some one has earned it for 
them. If they are there dishonestly, 
they are objects of pity rather than of 
envy. One might as well think it a 
hardship that one's grandfather sits on 
the sunny side of the gallery and 
smokes his pipe in ease, while one is 
toiling in the field and cannot afford 
the cost of, or time for, a pipe. It is 
the difference between sixteen and 
sixty. One has no right to the peace 
of sixty years, with the inexperience 
and vanity of sixteen. 

While I am a firm believer in the 
development of athletics at school and 
college, I think they have been devel- 
83 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

oped in late years all out of proportion. 
There is too much professionalism, ac- 
cording to my old-fashioned notions. To 
win is a fine thing. Every one ought 
to desire the laurel wreath. But to 
play fairly, to row gallantly, and to do 
one's best without jockeying, is far bet- 
ter than to win. 

It seems to me that a great deal of 
our college athletics has lost the idea 
of sport under ordinary conditions, in a 
mad race to beat records. Do, but be 
careful not to overdo. To do the things 
we ought not is as bad as to leave 
undone the things we ought. A boy 
should build up his physical life, that 
he may be a better all-round man, 
not a stronger animal. 

It is of great importance, also, that 
young men should consider the cost of 
84 



His Amusements 



their amusements, to see if they can be 
enjoyed honestly. It is old and trite 
enough to be more often acted upon, 
this axiom of manhood, that no recrea- 
tion can be honorably indulged in which 
one cannot afford. And this is a hard 
thing. It hurts. Sometimes it morti- 
fies. Let us look at this word " hard " 
for a moment! Unless a man accepts 
hardness as a part of his life — as a 
necessary factor in the building of his 
character four square — he will be like 
a timid animal until he dies. Twigs in 
his path will be trees, molehills moun- 
tains, and the soft dash of summer 
rain a tempest not to be endured. I 
am not writing for the man who does 
not understand, or will not learn, that 
this world is a workshop, and that 
the workers are equipped with the 
tools of Adam, not with the lamp of 
Aladdin. 

85 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

Subdue the earth, man! dig up its 
treasures ! span the heavens ! harness 
the forces of the air to your noble 
chariots ! But do not think these things 
can be done without hardness. 

These are not rhetorical figures. A 
man with his work, whether it be 
buying or selling, binding up broken 
limbs or preaching the Father to 
broken hearts, must endure hardness, 
not with sullen submission to the 
inevitable, but with a calm accept- 
ance of the divine order of the uni- 
verse as best, even when it presses 
down upon him and his task. 

# 

So it falls out that a man must 
begin his life with deprivations. Not 
in the ascetic sense of a whip of small 
cords for the stripes' sake, but because 
it is written in experience, as well as 
86 



His Amusements 



in books, that unless a man work 
neither shall he eat. 

A man's pleasures can only be 
pleasures, if he has a right to them. 
He only has a right to them, if he 
can afford to pay for them. And this 
often involves the hardness of self- 
denial. If a man only involved him- 
self, this need not be so difficult, if 
he is worth his salt at all. But the 
complexities of social life, especially in 
cities, involve us in intricate tangles 
with other people. 

The young man resents not being 
able to keep up with his fellows. 
Young women are often unconscious 
and thoughtless tempters. It is a hard 
thing to say no to one's self ; harder to 
say it to another, especially if that 
other be a woman. One would like 
to lay flowers, every morning, at my 
lady's feet. But there are offerings 

87 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

to honor, and offerings to dishonor. 
One would not like to give withered 
and decaying blossoms, and yet, when 
one gives what he has no right to 
give, because it is not properly his, 
his offering, of whatever sort, is 
tainted. 

A man is not mean because he re- 
frains from an expense beyond his 
honest possessions. Is he not mean 
if he falls into the temptation? 

A young boy who smokes, against 
his father's wish or command, is not 
thereby manly. He is mean. He is 
not only disobedient, but meanly diso- 
bedient. Setting aside the question 
of health and of fitness, it is unfair for 
a lad to do a thing at his fathers ex- 
pense, of which his father disapproves. 
A manly boy will see this, and be 
ashamed when it is put to him thus. 

It is the same with betting. There 
88 



His Amusements 



is a subtle immorality in gaining 
money at another's expense, without 
return. But a boy at school, in col- 
lege, or dependent upon his father 
for his bread and butter, is acting un- 
fairly and dishonorably when he risks 
his fathers money in games of chance 
or in betting. 

When he earns his own living, he 
must settle the question for himself; 
until he does, his father's wish should 
be his law. 

In the market place there are grades 
of luxury and ease and wage earning. 
The man who has grown old in the 
buying and selling has more money to 
use outside the market place than the 
man who has just set up his stall. It 
is not any injustice to the latter that 
he has not the gold and silver of the 
former. These are the earned incre- 
ment of the market place. 
89 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

The young man with the small wage 
for his efforts, which is the natural 
index of inexperience and youth, can- 
not expect, or be expected, to compete 
with his elders or with his contempo- 
raries who have the doubtful advantage 
of inherited wealth. 

Yet a great deal of the sorrowful 
complications of life proceed from the 
struggles of the man with one talent to 
keep up with the man with two or five. 

I have alluded to the bitterness, and 
sometimes the crime, that follow upon 
debt. Yet debt, in most instances, is 
the child, not of the necessities of life, 
but of its luxuries or comforts. 

One cannot get along without this 
or that? It is surprising with how 
little one can get along under the spur 
of necessity. We are too apt, in utter 
blindness, to confuse the things we 
need with the things we desire. 
90 



His Amusements 



We need bread and water; we de- 
sire cake and wine. We need shelter, 
and build palaces ; we need clothing, 
and robe ourselves in embroidered 
garments. We think that Solomon in 
all his glory is better arrayed than the 
lilies of the field. 

All recreation however innocent, all 
amusements however worthy, all indul- 
gences however honest, are barred to 
the man of honor, for which he cannot 
pay down in gold all his own. 

Therefore be very sure what is and 
what is not your own. There is no 
more subtle temptation in the life of a 
young man than that which whispers 
to-morrow in his ear. One of the 
vulgar characteristics of this day and 
generation is that of living on the in- 
stalment plan. It is a euphemism for 
living beyond one's means. It is debt 
dressed out in the garb of legitimacy. 
9i 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

How many young men hamper them- 
selves for six months or a year for the 
sake of one day's pleasures ! There is 
a certain weakness of character in the 
man who thus discounts his future. 

There are debts that fall out in a 
man's life which are perfectly honest, 
legitimate, and necessary, but I am very 
sure that such debts are never incurred 
in the enjoyment of pleasure. A man 
sometimes is forced to mortgage his 
crop to pay his help, but not to rent 
a box at the opera. 

I have been dealing so far with the 
innocent and legitimate amusements of 
young men. Let us now assume that 
you have both time and money to use 
and spend pretty much as you will ; and 
yet there is something to be said regard- 
ing the choice you are entitled to make. 
92 



His Amusements 



A great city, or even an ordinary 
town, offers a wide diversity of choice. 
Some mention of these has been made 
in a former chapter. 

There are amusements that rest and 
stimulate both body and mind, and 
there are those that inevitably debase. 
It is not always an easy task to distin- 
guish between them. 

The theatre, for instance, is at once a 
noble handmaid of the higher life, and 
the shameless betrayer of innocence and 
purity. 

The English drama was nursed in the 
bosom of the church, and the first actors 
were parsons and clerks. The sublime 
mysteries of Redemption were brought 
home to the intelligence of the simplest 
peasant by means of the rude germs out 
of which grew in time the immortal 
dramas of the Elizabethan cycle. The 
church, very early, recognized the power 
93 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

and inspiration of dramatic form. But 
the drama appeals to the common pas- 
sions as well as to the higher instincts. 
The stage may uplift, but it does, here 
and there, drag down. 

I warn you against the vulture instinct 
which seeks the offal and finds it. The 
decadent tone of the stage at the dawn 
of the twentieth century is recognized 
both by patron and player. The sad 
thing about it is that such a mass of 
patrons would have it so. 

It is a sorrowful thing that immorality 
dressed out in fascinating guise draws 
the culture, the intelligence, the fashion 
of our great cities as almost nothing else. 

It is a still more sorrowful fact that 
certain plays are witnessed by young 
men and women, side by side both the 
language and action of which are foul 
with evil suggestion. Young women are 
usually innocent of the evil. But are 
94 



His Amusements 



the young men ? And is it well that 
young women should breathe such an 
atmosphere? How long will they re- 
main innocent ? 

Art for art's sake ! 

Of all the cant that ever was canted, 
this is the worst. I do not mean that 
young people are criminals, or always 
conscious of the degradation of the 
standards demanded by decent people 
in dramatic representations. In my 
boyhood there were spectacular pieces 
and certain theatres which were recog- 
nized as off color. Men went to them 
who would not dream of taking wife, 
sister, mother, or daughter. In less 
than a generation it has fallen out that 
the allurements then stigmatized by 
respectable people have become almost 
the chief stock in trade of the stage, and 
family parties witness them without fear 
and without reproach. 
95 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

I would not be misunderstood as 
standing out for the steeple-hatted, sad- 
colored life of extreme Puritanism. I 
like the theatre, indeed, and value its 
ethical possibilities. I think we ought 
to have not only Shakespeare, but the 
musical glasses. Only, the glasses 
should be clean. I sympathize with the 
man who goes to the theatre to be en- 
tertained and amused. I laugh now as 
I think of the old-time minstrels with 
two end men and the interlocutor in his 
seedy dress coat. But fun and filth are 
not synonymous terms. There are ten 
commandments, all told. But our mod- 
ern playwrights seem to think their 
mission is confined to the exploitation 
of one only, and the trifling with 
that. 

Choose your play as you ought to 
choose your books, — of which more 
anon, — or your friends. 
96 



His Amusements 



There are other and grosser amuse- 
ments to which young men turn them- 
selves. I will not try your patience 
further than to say that the average 
young man's conscience and upbringing 
are as good guides as he can have. 
Until he dulls the inner voice which 
says "thou ought," or "thou oughtest 
not," by inattention or neglect, it will 
always sound the warning and give the 
counsel that is of God. 

Just one other form of amusement, 
however, needs must be touched upon, 
for it has the double lure of excitement 
and gain, — gambling. 

There is a good deal to be said on both 
sides, I must frankly admit. So much 
that I am inclined to waive, just here, 
the question as to whether gambling is 
a sin or not. Some will cry out in hor- 
7 97 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

ror at this, I know. But facts are facts, 
and a very large number of respectable 
and sanely religious people would be 
appalled at the accusation of being sin- 
ners because they stake a small sum at 
cards or billiards. 

I am not dealing with the elders, but 
with the youngsters. But I want the 
sympathy of the father when I speak to 
the son; and whatever he thinks or does, 
I know I have his moral backing in what 
I am about to say. 

Waiving the question of betting and 
gambling as a general proposition open 
to argument, I urge very strongly that 
it is an amusement which no young man 
can afford to follow. 

First, it is demoralizing to his best 
life, because, if he wins, the vicious view 
grows upon him that money gained with- 
out its equivalent given is a legitimate 
possession. If he loses, he is apt to fall 
98 



His Amusements 



into the habit of paying debts of so-called 
honor at the expense of his debts of real 
honor; and, at the least, he has wasted 
his substance for naught. He has buried 
his Lord's talent, not only in sand, but 
in quicksand. 

Second, it is in a real sense debasing 
his finer instincts, because it encourages 
covetousness, the root of all evil, from 
which spring the dark shoots of crime. 

Third, it leads to extravagance ; easy 
come, easy go; or it brings to despair; 
and it occupies time that no young man 
has the right to give at the expense of his 
physical and intellectual life. The pool 
room and the card table have brought 
more young men to ruin than the wine- 
cup. 

Few of us need to be urged to the 
adoption of amusements in the pro- 
'LofC. 99 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

gramme of life. But there are some 
who neglect all-round development in 
the competitions and struggles of the 
market place. 

In an industrial community it is often 
necessary to recall men to the fact that 
the body and mind are as important as 
the purse. We can't carry our gains 
with us by sewing a pocket in our 
shrouds. No man has a right to go 
about this world in a wizened body if he 
can prevent it. The body is a trust to 
be administered, not a bandage to be 
thrown aside. The mind is a talent to 
be used, not crystallized. This most 
pathetic testimony of Charles Darwin 
ought to be treasured up by every young 
man: — 

" My mind seems to have become a kind 

of machine for grinding general laws out of 

large collections of facts ; but why this should 

have caused the atrophy of that part of the 

ioo 



His Amusements 



brain alone on which the higher tastes de- 
pend, I cannot conceive . . . and if I had to 
live my life again, I would have made a rule 
to read some poetry and listen to some music 
at least once a week. . . . The loss of these 
tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possi- 
bly be injurious to the intellect, and more 
probably to the moral character, by enfeebling 
the emotional part of our nature." 

Books, music, art, all beckon. Time ? 
Make time ! What are you living for ? 
The most barren, hopeless, and sordid 
life on earth, the one fullest of self- 
disgust and unrest, is that life that 
crawls perpetually in the dust of the 
earth, feeding, drinking, and seeking 
cover. 

Open up the avenues of the divine 
inpouring. Rejoice and be glad in the 
fields, in a boat, on a wheel, at tennis, 
golf, or football, as lookers on if too stiff 
or awkward to take a hand, — this is to 
rejoice in the Lord. 

IOI 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

Then instead of the old pessimists 
prophecy of the evil days drawing nigh 
when we shall have no pleasure in them, 
the older prophet's word will come 
true in our lives, and the longer one 
lives the truer the word will be, " they 
shall renew their strength; they shall 
mount up with wings as eagles ; they 
shall run and not be weary, they shall 
walk and not faint." 



1 02 



V 

HIS BOOKS AND READING 

THE most important concerns of 
a young man, as has been said 
more than once in these pages, 
are those that make for the building up 
of his life beyond life. Threescore and 
ten years look a long time to " sweet 
and twenty," but they pass. And we 
may not shut our eyes to what is on the 
other side of the psalmist's time limit. 

Of course, everything that concerns 
a man at all, in a broad way of speaking, 
has an influence on the spiritual life, — 
the life held in leash by the flesh bonds 
to-day. But there are differences of 
power. 

While we are in the flesh we must con- 
sider its demands and needs. All that 
103 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

ministers to it, gives form and color to 
the character, and the character is the 
man as he must one day stand, without 
the body, before God whom he shall see 
for himself and not another. 

The work a man finds to do, the rec- 
reations he seeks for rest, the associa- 
tions he makes his own, these all have 
to do with character, as I have been 
trying to point out. 

# 

One day he will stand up and move 
away from his body, but as a part of his 
spiritual existence he will certainly bear 
with him his mind, his intellect. It 
concerns a young man what sort of a 
mind he possesses. We are taught on 
the highest authority to serve the Lord 
God with heart and soul and mind. 
This being so, a man has no more right 
to neglect his mind than to waste his 
104 



His Books and Reading 

body. A drunkard and a self-made fool 
are not far apart in the great heap of 
human wreckage. 

After the school-days are over you 
will be left largely to yourself, for with 
the coming of manhood comes also 
the honorable privileges of self-reliance. 
Your pastors and masters may teach 
you the rudiments, and the good God 
may give you a mind. No one on earth 
or in heaven can force you to use the 
one or keep you from abusing the 
other. 

A man need not be a scholar or an 
expert in 'isms and 'ologies to have an 
alert, active, and productive mind. But 
if he means to take any care of his mind 
at all, or if he wishes to meet men or 
women who are worth knowing, on equal 
terms in this world, and consort with 
the heroes and kings of literature, 
science, and art in the world to come, 
105 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

he must know books, and must culti- 
vate the reading habit. 

In parenthesis, let me explain the 
latter part of that last sentence. In 
looking forward to entering the many 
mansions, I suppose each one of us has 
some vague idea of what the state we 
call the spiritual life is like. 

We do not know anything about it. 

The authority to whom Christian men ' 
refer spiritual questions — -the Man of 
Nazareth — said very little of it in de- 
tail. St. Paul — if it was the spiritual 
existence he saw in his vision — came 
back with a message to men that the 
things he saw and heard were impossible 
of human utterance. < 

But we have our thoughts and visions 
and dreams. The All-glorious Person 
whose now vanished Hand we will seek 
1 06 



His Books and Reading 

to touch, whose now hushed Voice we 
will strain to hear, He, of course, will 
be first. 

But after Him will there not be those 
about whom w r e will have a great curi- 
osity, and with whom we will hope to 
talk and walk, or whatever corresponds 
in the spiritual world to talking and 
walking ? 

Next to the joy of seeing Him face 
to face, will there not be the joy of 
seeing the great souls who have been 
His mouthpieces for one word or another 
through the ages? Will not intellect 
foregather with intellect in the spiritual 
life and be satisfied ? Will there not 
be those to whom we will be glad to 
say, " You helped me more than once 
on that old Earth. You were a potent 
influence in making me see what I was 
and what I ought to be ? " 

For myself, there are two or three 
107 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

people who long since have passed 
within the veil, to whom I shall want 
to say these words. 

# 

None of us will have any finer or 
higher mental calibre as we go to our 
own place, than we lay down with in the 
last earthly sleep. Whatever there, is to 
be in the way of development, we must 
begin where we leave off. No one will 
see or perhaps know what kind of a 
poor battered body we have emerged 
from, but the mind of a man seems to 
be a part of that eternal existence which 
lasts through the wreck of the temporal. 
The intellectual life of a man in the 
world is a sort of adumbration of what 
the spiritual life is to be. Mind is a 
facet of the divine image. Therefore 
the intellect may not be trifled with 
here, if it is to mean anything here- 
108 



His Books and Reading 

after. We cannot serve God with all 
our mind, unless we use it, care for it, 
strengthen it, continually. 

As we deal with men and affairs here, 
we know that it is not the strength of 
the body, except in the prize fight, but 
the cunning or the wisdom of the mind 
that wins the world's victories. In the 
great ages of the world the thinker has 
been imperator. The hand and arm 
have their victories, but only as things, 
not as powers; as instruments, not as 
energies. The difference is that be- 
tween the artisan who lays the stone, 
and the architect who has the whole 
beautiful temple in his mind. 

Now to the average man about his 
life work, arises the same distinction in 
the way he carries on that work. One 
gets along as best he may, following 
patterns, a good mimic, and the other 
uses his mind and invents patterns. 
109 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

The thinking workman (whatever the 
work be, theology, law, merchandise, 
art) is a better man, even though the 
other kind of a man occasionally makes 
more money. It is not a question of 
good and evil in morals. The differ- 
ence I am trying to illustrate is that 
between the man who learns a language 
so as to enter into the spirit of its litera- 
ture, and the man who learns a few 
words so as to purchase a railroad ticket 
or order his dinner. 

Some people — a great many — prac- 
tically do nothing else with their mother 
tongue than to make it a medium for 
the bread and butter necessities. 

In whatever vocation you may be 
embarked, young man, you may use or 
disuse your mind. In using it you may 
prostitute and enfeeble it, or ennoble 
and strengthen its powers. 

More than any other agency, the habit 
no 



His Books and Reading 

of reading and the choice of books must 
shape this intellectual development. 

It is an old subject and a trite one. 
But as I have had occasion to remark 
before, subjects grow old and trite in 
proportion to their intrinsic value. We 
do not spend breath on themes barren of 
reality. Precisely because such themes 
as this are trite, do men grow careless 
of their vital importance. 

In spite of what appears to be the 
contrary, this age is not given to books. 
It is too much given to " booklets," news- 
papers, and magazines. It is too much 
addicted to "manuals" on every possible 
and impossible subject, from gardening 
to gravitation. Every man his own this, 
that, or the other, is the favorite motto. 

The introduction of modern systems 

of teaching, from the kindergarten up, 

while it has cleared the path of the 

learner of a great deal of useless rub- 

iii 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

bish, has by no means annulled the fiat 
of that old copybook motto, there is no 
royal road to learning. 

Infinite patience and infinite pains 
still meet with their rich and peculiar 
rewards, 'Cross lots is not the shortest, 
much less the surest, road to culture and 
knowledge. 

I do not mean to speak disrespect- 
fully of newspapers. The press of this 
country is, on the whole, clean, moral, 
and upright. The exceptions exist, but 
as exceptions, not the rule. Its greatest 
fault, in my judgment, is its indiscrimi- 
nate partisanship, but this is slowly 
passing. I do not advocate a neutral, 
colorless press. But whenever it is 
muzzled, either by its political leanings 
or by the market place morality of ex- 
pediency, from uttering the truth on 
public questions, it loses both opportu- 
nity and influence. 

112 



His Books and Reading 

It is not against the newspaper I 
warn young men, but against the news- 
paper habit. We must have the news, 
but headlines and telegraph despatches 
need a corrective, which is not found in 
the magazines, useful as they are in 
their sphere. 

They are longer bits and snatches, 
but bits and snatches still. A man's 
reading must be systematic, and on sub- 
jects both for knowledge and culture. 
For this you must have recourse to 
books and cultivate habits of reading 
and study. 

I know what many of you will object 
to this, because I lost five or six years 
of my life uttering the same nonsense. 
Again it is experientia docens. 

You think you have no time for the 

training of the intellectual life, to read 

steadily and with a purpose. You 

might as well say you have no time 

8 113 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

to eat or sleep. You take time for 
these, because your body will else fail 
you. Well, the best part of your life 
will fail you unless you take time to 
read ; unless you prefer to exist with 
the oyster, or creep and slide from food 
to shelter like the alligator. 

I venture to say that no one whose 
eyes fall upon this page but can find 
one or two good hours every day of 
his life to devote to books and study, 
without injury to his day's work. You 
can if you will. You cannot if you put 
golf, or tennis, or billiards, or dancing, 
or cards first, after your task work. 

When a man, under the ordinary cir- 
cumstances of life, excuses himself from 
doing something because he has not the 
time, he really means that it is not of 
sufficient interest or importance for him 
to find the time. 

# 
114 



His Books and Reading 



But there is a far more subtle difficulty 
lying half acknowledged in your mind 
than that of time. 

You are honestly of the opinion that 
you have not intellect enough to read 
anything heavier than a novel, and some 
of you shy at Scott and Thackeray be- 
cause you suppose them to be beyond 
you. 

It is possible for you to so atrophy 
your minds that nothing will stimulate 
them or feed them beyond the continued 
stories of the weekly press. 

But this is usually the fault of parents 
or teachers in not training the first years 
aright. 

I do not mean to exclude fiction from 
your reading — far from it. There are 
noble writers, masters of the craft, w r hom 
you cannot afford to pass by. But 
among novels choose the best. It is 
just as easy as to batten on the worst. 
115 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

And I venture to say that any novel 
deserving of the name great will be 
a mental stimulus, and suggestive of 
reading on other lines. 

The man who reads novels only, 
however, weakens his intellectual life. 
It is worse than a purely vegetarian 
diet for the body. When you invite 
the test, you will be surprised to realize 
that your intellectual capacity is far in 
excess of your own first estimate of it. 
There comes a time in the development 
of the average young man's mind w r hen 
he realizes that he can think for himself, 
and draw conclusions independent of 
others. This exquisite experience is 
led up to by the cultivated habit of read- 
ing. One needs contact with other 
minds to generate thought of his own. 
Let your reading be systematic, and on 
a subject, the one most interesting to 
you. The taste develops with use, and 
116 



His Books and Reading 

with a rapidity that will seem amazing. 
Then beware how you use it ! 

There are two varieties of literature 
against which the young man needs to 
be warned: the nasty, decadent novel, 
which came into such vogue in the last 
days of the nineteenth century, contem- 
porary with a drama of the same sort; 
and the pessimistic story or essay (or 
sermon, for that matter), which teaches, 
openly or by implication, that this is a 
poor sort of world and mankind a poor 
sort of creature. What has been said 
under the head of amusements concern- 
ing the drama needs to be emphasized 
in reference to books. The young man 
of good instincts does not choose his 
friends because of their bad morals. 
But how often is he not invited to 
choose his books because they have 
117 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

the flavor of evil suggestion about 
them ? 

From the standpoint of only a gen- 
eration ago, how bold, brazen, unblush- 
ing a certain school of novelists has 
become ! We can no longer trust to 
the imprint of publishers, with a few 
rare exceptions. I am aware of the 
sneering comment that is made by the 
ultra refined art critic. He thinks the 
young person, as he calls him, is too 
much consulted by the censor of morals 
in literature and art. He loftily says 
that because such and such a book is 
not for the young person is no reason 
why it should not be written. He clam- 
ors for art. The young person is 
naturally offended, and chooses for him- 
self. He does not wish to be accused 
of lack of culture and breadth. 

But the young man may listen re- 
spectfully and without shame to us who 
118 



His Books and Reading 

love him and wish him well ; and some of 
us will tell him that these lovers of pure 
art and their disciples, but insult his in- 
telligence when they prate of a culture 
that is only to be acquired through a dis- 
section of courtesan morals, and in the 
analysis of the beast side of human na- 
ture. They might as well claim that a 
man must eat rotten apples to appreciate 
the art of fruit growing. 

Avoid the nasty books of the deca- 
dent school in your cultivation of the 
intellectual life, young man. Do not 
fear that you will become warped or 
narrow, because you prefer the highway 
to the gutter. 

I regard the novel as a valuable factor 
in moulding the higher life of man, by 
leading him, in his hour of recreation 
as of toil, through noble walks and in- 
spiring paths. The novel appeals to 
human nature in such a fashion that it 
119 



The Young Man in Modern Life 



may be said to meet a righteous demand 
and supply a legitimate need. We do 
not narrow the scope or limit the field 
of the writer of fiction when we ask for 
plain decency. 

The plain speaking of the Eliza- 
bethan dramatists, and the coarse lan- 
guage of the Queen Anne novelists, are 
preferable even to the thinly disguised 
licentiousness, the utterly needless (for 
purposes of art) dissection of the animal 
passions which greet us from the book 
counter, or grin hideously at us from 
the stage. 

How shall a young man know what 
to read ? 

There will always be some one to 

help you in choice of books, — the 

schoolmaster, the parson, the parents 

perhaps. But in order to read with a 

120 



His Books and Reading 

purpose — and for culture one must read 
with a purpose — ones real aim must 
be, not books, but subjects. 

If you have a bias you will (and ought 
to) follow it. Many young men, per- 
haps most, have no special bias, and 
thrash aimlessly here, there, and every- 
where, until they fall into the poor habit 
of desultory reading. It is true that 
Dr. Johnson's remark, " Read anything 
five hours daily and you will soon be- 
come learned," has some truth at the 
bottom, but it is not the whole truth, 
and may be a very dangerous course to 
follow. 

Have a subject! 

And to begin with, read history. 
It will introduce you to everything 
else worth reading. It is the path of 
God through the years. It is his 
eloquent message to man. It is not 
only the story of yesterday, but the 

121 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

interpretation of to-day, and the fore- 
taste of to-morrow. Do not besrin 
with a history of the world, nor even 
of a nation ! Dig into a period. Take 
the flowering period of Elizabethan 
history and literature. You will be 
with most noble company. You will 
not only revel in the most eloquent 
writers and poets, but explore new 
lands with the sturdiest pioneers. 
You will witness the rebirth of a 
great nation from religious and po- 
litical thraldom to the large life of 
freedom. 

I mention this one period by way of 
illustration. There are others in the 
list which you may find more to your 
taste. History is not a narrow study. 
You cannot know one period or one 
nation well, without knowing equally 
of others. To know Elizabeth, for in- 
stance, you must know Philip II. of 
122 



His Books and Reading 

Spain, Louis of France, William the 
Silent, and other glorious names, some 
to honor and some to dishonor; but 
all parts of that brilliant sixteenth 
century cycle, when as Motley says, 
11 The constellations which have for 
centuries been shining in the English 
firmament were then human creatures, 
walking English earth," Shakespeare 
and Spenser, Ben Jonson and Bacon ! 

Your history will be accompanied 
by biography. Perhaps you will be 
easiest led into history by way of the 
charm and fascination that cluster 
about personal reminiscences of men. 
A good biography is the most stimu- 
lating reading a man can have put to 
his hands. You cannot understand 
entirely the history of a generation, 
unless you know something of the 
men who were the conspicuous forces 
in making its history. Nor can you 
123 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

fully understand men, unless you know 
something of the heredity and environ- 
ment that fashioned them. 

# 

Read the Bible ! 

Wise men do not pass it by, though 
some poor fools do. Merely as a 
proper culture, the young man must 
know his Bible. If we were to ex- 
tract it — its letter and spirit — from 
English literature, we would have little 
more than paper rags left. Aside from 
any theory of inspiration, about which 
we know so little that silence is better 
than speech, the Bible inspires. It 
finds men, as Coleridge said. It goes 
down to the depths and rises to the 
heights of all human experience. It re- 
flects every mood, it stimulates every 
thought, it comforts every sorrow. 

But do not use it, as some people 
124 



His Books and Reading 

wear amulets and blessed images and 
relics. It has no sort of virtue as a 
fetich. Bibliolatry is as much a falling 
away from true ideas of worship, as 
Mariolatry is from the true idea of 
womanhood. The words of the Bible 
are not sacred things in themselves. 
The book of the Chronicles is not a 
message to your soul, as are the four- 
teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters 
of St. John's Gospel. 

Discriminate in the Bible, as you would 
in any other book. Homer's catalogue 
of the ships is not stimulating; neither 
are the genealogies of the Jews. 

Finally, as to the use of books and 
the habit of reading, let me speak of 
them as we feel when the Indian 
summer steals over us, and we begin 
to look for shorter and fewer days. 
125 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

The day will come when the re- 
fuge of books will be the only refuge 
from the cares, the anxieties, the 
sorrows that accumulate with the fly- 
ing years. 

It does not yet appear what he will 
be, to the young man. But one day, 
and many days, you will grow tired 
with routine, and, beyond a very few, 
people will worry you. It is not right 
that this should be the normal state 
of even old age. But it is certain to 
happen occasionally, and if you can 
retire with a book in your hand, 
and be for a time with the world's 
noblest and best, you will emerge 
refreshed and cheerful, to bear your 
own part again among others in the 
world. 

You may lift yourself out of the 
dust of the highway into starry path- 
ways looking toward the delectable 
126 



His Books and Reading 

city. You may have the companion- 
ship of the gods. 

Learn to read and to live with 
books, and you will have a foretaste 
of the life eternal. 



127 



VI 

HIS MARRIAGE 

ALL other events of a man's life 
fade off into the neutral tints of 
insignificance compared with 
his marriage, as an influence in mould- 
ing character, as a factor in the noble 
or ignoble use of life. 

Marriage will lift him to the heights, 
or drag him in the depths, or condemn 
him to mental and moral listlessness. 

He may escape from or dominate the 
forces of heredity ; he may begin his 
life work over again, if he discovers that 
he has made a mistake. But his mar- 
riage is the one abiding fact which can- 
not be altered or trifled with, until death 
parts the twain. 

128 



His Marriage 



And this is wise and just. Marriage 
should be indissoluble. Because of the 
human necessity and the divine mean- 
ing, it can be broken but by the one sin. 
The civil law does not and cannot 
deal with hearts and souls, only with 
bodies. The divine law goes deeper 
than this. Therefore, the only excuse 
for divorce to the Christian man or 
woman is the one allowed by Christ. 

Was this a whim of His ? 

It was the acknowledgment of a great 
fact, that the family life is the basis 
of human society. We are not isolate 
atoms, but members one of another. 
The unit of life in this world is not man, 
but man with a helpmeet for him. 
Man cannot even sin by himself with- 
out affecting others. It is not written 
that Eve was banished from Eden, but 
9 129 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

when the gates closed upon the man, 
and angels waved their threatening 
swords against his return, Eve went with 
him, hand in hand. 

The stability of the family is the mor- 
dant of civilization. Are there no ex- 
ceptions ? Yes, God help our weakness 
and sin, there are. Sometimes separa- 
tion is the only way to prevent further 
shame and degradation. But separation, 
not divorce. Man and woman must 
suffer the penalties they invite. No 
young man thinks of this as possible on 
his wedding day ; and it is well he does 
not. In his marriage, as in no other 
event of his life, should he reflect that 
he is taking an irrevocable step. " For 
better, for worse," is an awful and sol- 
emn charge. It cannot be made too 
awful or too solemn. 



130 



His Marriage 



Now, young man, are you old enough 
to marry ? 

It is not alone the years that count, 
but well used years ought to count. 
We do not expect experience without 
age, knowledge without experience. Do 
you know yourself? If you have not 
yourself well in hand, under control, you 
are not fit to undertake the life that 
marriage involves. Are you capable of 
understanding more than the surface 
existence of her whom you are asking 
to be your wife ? Are you beyond the 
age when a man is apt to be fickle and 
changeable in his likes and dislikes ? 
Have you known many good women ? 
Have you weighed your own temper in 
the balance ? Are you willing, nay, 
glad, to make sacrifices, real sacrifices, 
for one woman ? You can express your 
love now by gifts of books and flowers. 
But do you know yourself well enough 
131 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

to guarantee that you could express it 
by restraint upon your temper and 
tongue and selfish whims, when she no 
longer possesses the attraction of nov- 
elty, when you are no longer the suitor, 
but (as you will find, and she too) 
sought ? 

Are you what she thinks you to be ? 
Not altogether, for somehow women are 
like moles when they love ; with now 
and then a rare exception, they do .not 
see. But men ought to see for them. 
It is the noblesse oblige of man who seeks 
to mate with woman. 

If you are not on the pedestal where 
she has put you, — and you undoubtedly 
are not, young man, — are you striving 
for it? Are you really a man all eager 
to assume responsibility, or just a boy, 
who wants something, and therefore 
thinks he ought to have it? 

It is not necessary, in your individual 
132 



His Marriage 



case, that you should ever marry. The 
world will get along if you are left in 
single blessedness. If you can take in 
that thought, then question yourself as 
to whether there is enough in you, at 
present, to warrant your becoming the 
centre of a new set of responsibilities 
and privileges ? I do not mean to dis- 
courage you, young man, and I can just 
imagine the curl of your lip at these 
unpleasant suggestions. With your par- 
ents' consent, the law of man will permit 
you to marry before you have reached 
years of maturity, but you must have a 
higher permission than that. 

Youthful fancies and wayward desires 
may be very venial sins in the unmarried 
man, but they rise into vast importance 
when he is forging lifelong ties. Have 
you the decent soberness a man ought to 
have when he plunges into an unknown 
experience which touches others ? 
133 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

If you know yourself, do you know 
her? A man may be in the Indian 
summer of life and know very little in- 
deed of a girl with the flush of the dawn 
on her cheek, and the light of the morn- 
ing dancing in her eyes. 

She is pretty, of course — to you. And 
you wonder how she has so far escaped 
the eyes of men. She has doubtless 
been waiting for you. She is attractive, 
possesses the accomplishments that so- 
ciety demands, and is perhaps admired 
of others. All these attract you. 

But what else do you know? Mar- 
riage ties formed of such strands only 
are apt to become marriage bonds. 

Beauty has its midsummer and its au- 
tumn as well as spring. It ages a great 
deal faster than your appreciation of it. 
Smart sallies of wit and graceful turns 
of compliment have a way of getting 
threadbare — w T ith some people. There 
134 



His Marriage 



are three hundred and sixty-five days 
in the year. Looking across the same 
table at the same face, on three separate 
occasions of these separate days, will 
pall, unless you discern something be- 
neath the skin and behind the eyes that 
dazzle during the honeymoon. 

What is the entity, the real self, back 
of these admirable charms ? 

What is her capacity for discipline, 
for sorrow, for pain? for poverty, per- 
haps ? (I know that you smile at these 
things as though they cannot come unto 
your life, but you will be a notable ex- 
ception to the human race if you escape 
them.) 

Has she any mind ? Does she read 
anything beyond the novels of the day? 
Has she an independent personality? 
By which I mean, does she possess some 
opinions that were not her parents', and 
are not yours ? A man with even a ru- 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

dimentary intellect cannot live by echoes 
alone. 

Has she anything apart from you 
which is her own, and which may be a 
purpose in her life, giving her dignity 
and stability of character? 

I do not mean mere accomplishments. 
A woman should have a purpose in life 
as w r ell as a man, and, I am heretic 
enough to say, apart from a man, even 
her husband. Her personality is as dis- 
tinct an entity as his. Marriage should 
not kill this, but develop it. 

It is a long journey, young man, is 
matrimony, and you ought not to be over- 
hasty in choosing a companion for the 
pilgrimage. It is blithe enough as you 
fare forth hand in hand from the threshold 
of youth. But to-morrow! It is not all 
joy and laughter. The song need not die 
out of the heart, nor the laughter from 
the soul, but it very often does. 
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His Marriage 



Know her, then, as well as yourself. 
She is to be a comrade. If she goes 
faster than you, you are a shamed man. 
When a woman is forced — even in her 
heart, secretly — to look down upon her 
husband, he will find it out, and his step 
will get slower, and they will grow fur- 
ther apart. If she lags behind, it is 
almost as bad. Then you will either ac- 
commodate your pace to hers, and the 
high and lofty ambition of your man- 
hood will die out, or you will be alone 
at your task. And that is the most mis- 
erable thing that can happen. The true 
man will take up that burden and carry 
it, but he is never the same man. 

Choose a wife like Eve. She had her 
faults, poor Eve. But she had the clear 
qualities of noble womanhood. Every 
woman is an Eve so far as the faults are 
concerned ; but every woman does not 
share Adam's sorrows, or take her mat- 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

tock in hand to help him hew at the tan- 
gled undergrowth of the world they are 
commissioned, in common, to subdue. 

# 

Can you afford to marry ? By this is 
not meant that you and she ought to 
begin life on the income of middle age, 
nor with its luxuries. Love in a cottage 
is a very charming dream. It has ele- 
ments of possibility — in dreams. Once 
this writer saw real love in a real cottage. 
The joy and beauty of that ideal com- 
panionship — it was middle-aged com- 
panionship too — form a beautiful picture 
in memory. I do not say it is impos- 
sible ; I would suggest that it is perhaps 
infrequent. But the practical details of 
love in a cottage are so important that it 
is wisdom for the youngest couple, with 
the most infallible knowledge of life, to 
sit down and count the cost of it. 
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His Marriage 



When a man takes unto himself a 
wife, he is obeying divine law, all other 
things being equal. It is an unsenti- 
mental question, but can you afford to 
marry? You may have a reasonable 
salary, or be settled in the beginnings 
of your profession. But are you settled 
on reasonably sure foundations? Have 
you anything laid away for the unex- 
pected that you must expect? Is your 
life so ranged that you may fairly expect 
to increase your income with increasing 
responsibilities ? Can you afford to in- 
sure your life for the benefit of your 
family? Of course, you look forward 
to many years, and are apt to scoff at 
the precautions of cold-blooded counsel. 
But you may be needed to fit into the 
divine plan somewhere else, and the ro- 
mance of your young manhood may be 
cut short. Can you afford that, for her? 

Perhaps so for to-day. But there is 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

to-morrow, and to-morrows after. No 
man is morally justified in marrying so 
long as he does not see his way clearly 
to the maintenance in honorable inde- 
pendence, of a family. 

Love is no excuse. This is not or- 
thodox, but it is better, it is common 
sense. One might as well plead his 
love of jewels as a reason for stealing 
diamonds. You are stealing something 
from a girl which neither you nor she 
can ever replace, for which you can 
never make up, if you marry her be- 
fore you are well rooted in your life 
work and bearing fruit. You are steal- 
ing the joy of her girlhood. 

There is another consideration. 
Granted that every other condition is 
fulfilled, there is one which is, perhaps, 
most important of all. 
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His Marriage 



Have you a moral right to marry at 
all ? Does there lurk in your blood 
any inherited or inheritable disease? 
Have the sins of your fathers or your 
own excesses tainted your physical life ? 
If so, you are as much vowed to celibacy 
as though you heard a divine command 
to that effect. Indeed, I am not sure 
but that the command is implied in the 
Second Commandment, " the sins of the 
fathers." 

Are you willing to undertake the 
awful responsibility of transmitting life 
that must always be under the shadows, 
or send a taint tingling to the finger 
tips of another generation. Because 
she is willing is no excuse for you. 
When she loves, she seldom has room, 
at first, for any other thought. Blessed 
be God for the faith and hope of a lov- 
ing woman ! But dare you take that 
advantage and run the risk? 
141 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

If you dare, then there should be a 
place where the suffrage of your fellow- 
citizens should confine you within walls. 
You have not moral responsibility 
enough to be at large. Think of this. 

Let us take for granted that you are 
married, and, despite these cold cautions, 
it is the sincerest and heartiest wish we 
have for the young that they may mate 
honorably and happily. 

There are some further reflections for 
you to ponder. 

Your marriage is for good and all. 
The reason has been already given. 
The family is the unit of society, the 
source of its best life. As it is honored 
and ennobled, so is the nation lifted up. 
As it is degraded or lightly esteemed, 
the people live on a lower plane. 

You will presently see that the rose 
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His Marriage 



color is of a darker shade than you 
thought; that some days are dim and 
gray. You will be disillusioned of many 
things. But if s you have a happy mar- 
riage, a real union of lives as well as 
hands, something better will have taken 
the place of your illusions. You will 
see by your side, not merely a pretty 
girl to be toyed with and petted and in- 
dulged. You will discover a comrade, 
loyal, tender, and true; a spur to the 
best work that lies in you ; an inspira- 
tion to your high ambitions ; one whose 
approval will be worth more to you than 
the applause of all others. She will 
share in the joy of your victories, and 
be a solace in your temporary or final 
defeats. She will not shrink from shar- 
ing your travail pains when duty calls 
you to make sacrifices. Her first 
thought will not be of the earthly wages 
of the market-place. She will under- 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

stand that a man's honor, and his sense 
of noblesse oblige, often lead him where 
misunderstandings thicken and even 
personal risk is involved. 

She will not be an angel, though, if 
she is all this to you. She will have 
her vagaries, and humors, and moods, 
just as you will, and oftener than she 
will ever admit to you. But they will 
play upon the surface of her life and 
yours, and she will be the best friend 
you have in the world, the centre of a 
home, from which you will go forth 
with courage, to which you will return 
with joy. 

The love of the early days, not being 
abused or misunderstood to be some- 
thing else, will deepen and ripen, and if 
it pleases God to spare you together, 
old age will find you side by side and 
content. 

144 



His Marriage 



But your marriage may not be of 
this ideal sort. Yet it need not be all 
tragedy. 

The tragic in life is sometimes the 
exaggeration of its comedy. Be warned 
against making mountains of molehills 
in the beginning. The sweet, new 
atmosphere of marriage makes great 
demands, strange and unaccustomed de- 
mands upon both. 

Do not mistake ruffles on the surface 
for a raging tumult beneath; do not 
think that hasty complaints and criti- 
cism come from lack of love deep down. 
Sometimes the sting of the tongue is 
the result of an anxiety proceeding from 
deepest love. You may see a man some- 
times fall into impatience at the cries of 
a sick child. His impatience is the out- 
ward expression of anguish because the 
child suffers. If he could relieve it, then 

there would be another story. 
io i 45 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

There are necessary jars and mental 
friction in the adjustment of two lives 
about a common unfamiliar centre. Be 
patient. A man must bear for others 
as well as himself. A good heart and 
an honest purpose will tide over many 
a long waste of troubled waters and 
bring you into the haven of peace. 

# 

But there is still the marriage that is 
genuinely unhappy. It is the outward 
union of two souls with fundamentally 
nothing in common. It follows upon 
many causes, — hasty marriage, mar- 
riage de convenance, for position, for 
money, or just the desire — the wo- 
man's oftenest — to emancipate herself 
from unhappy or unpleasant environ- 
ment. Parents are as often to blame 
for unhappy marriages as the son and 
daughter. I repeat with emphasis, take 
146 



His Marriage 



the time before marriage to sit down 
and count the cost of it. 

What can be said of such an unhappy 
marriage ? That is always a tragedy, 
and the problem is ultimately in the 
good God s hands to solve. 

But the human factors may still do 
something. When there can no longer 
be the joy of home and the loyal com- 
radeship of two souls growing closer 
together, there may always be mutual 
tolerance and even respect. When life 
is filled with regret and pain over a step 
that can never be retraced, there may 
always be good manners, and a silent 
recognition that it is equally hard for 
both. In all human probability there 
has been a fault on both sides. But I 
warn the man to take to himself the 
greater blame. He is bound in ever- 
lasting honor to shield and protect, when 
he no longer loves. A woman trusted 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

him once whom he swore to cherish 
until death parted them. When he 
took her from the natural protection of 
her father's house, he put himself in the 
stead of father and brother. 

# 

I venture here upon a delicate subject 
which would need only to be alluded 
to, but for the fact that the stage and 
the novel of the day give it such 
prominence. 

Men and women (mostly men) seek 
to relieve the strain of domestic misery 
in unlawful ways. 

We hear much talk of "affinities" 
and " kindred souls," and all sorts of 
everlasting immoral mush of the same 
sort. The name and the reality of friend- 
ship between the sexes have been so 
smirched by the reckless sensualist that 
it is almost impossible for a man and a 
148 



His Marriage 



woman to hold cordial intercourse with- 
out being misunderstood or maligned. 
Narrow and shallow and unhappy minds 
cannot conceive of such a friendship as 
not involving wrong. 

But as to " affinities," young man or 
old man, avoid that rot. You can afford 
to be unhappy, but you cannot afford 
to be a knave. If you have dipped your 
soul in that pitch, or burned your finger 
at the flame, and escaped so as by fire, 
you will understand that it merely adds 
misery to misery. The misery of do- 
mestic unhappiness you may lay before 
your heavenly Father, but this unhal- 
lowed misery ! 

Your case is not peculiar. You think 

there is no sorrow quite like your sorrow. 

So did Jeremiah ages ago, and millions 

since. It is no harder in itself or to 

149 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

bear, than that of many whose lips are 
closed upon their grief, and who fight the 
battle alone under a mask of calm. 
Never think that the wretchedness, 
however deep, has a way of escape 
through a deeper pit. 

For better, for worse ! These words 
are not mere forms hallowed by centuries 
of use. They are a message to you to 
count the cost before you build the 
castle of life. If you could not face the 
possibility of " worse " you had no right 
to enter on a hope of the " better." You 
cannot say that you have not been suffi- 
ciently warned. The marriage service 
is perfectly and abundantly explicit, and 
it admonishes you that you are not to 
enter upon that new and blessed relation- 
ship " unadvisedly or lightly, but rever- 
ently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and 
in the fear of God." 

But it is too late to think the matter 
150 



His Marriage 



over, when one stands at the altar and 
hears these awful words. 

If marriage presents itself to the young 
man as a desirable state, he should at 
least study to find out what it involves 
before the irrevocable step is taken. 
The marriage service is as solemn as 
the burial service. It ought to be. It 
is the death of boyhood and girlhood, 
in the hope of the resurrection of a 
larger manhood and womanhood. 

A man usually reads a documentbefore 
he signs his name assenting to its prop- 
ositions. It is a very remarkable fact 
that many a man stands before the clergy- 
man hand in hand with the woman he 
has chosen to be his helpmeet, without 
once looking at the vows and promises 
he is to take, save perhaps the day 
before in a hurried way to see when his 
" answers " come in ; and this for the 
solemn act of life with which is bound 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

up the lives and the happiness of 
others. 

Beware how you take it, but stand by 
the oath of the marriage service once 
vowed. If it has brought unexpected 
unhappiness, it becomes the noblesse 
oblige of manhood to keep it unsullied. 

There is a silver lining to the cloud 
of an unhappy marriage which may be 
seen even by those who abide within its 
pale. Honestly striving to make the 
best of it, if there are children caring 
for and nourishing them as pledges given 
to God for this life and the life to come, 
God may some day send light. Per- 
haps in this curious world where He is 
so often frustrated by our devious ways, 
He may bring sundered lives together. 
But the light in the night of this sorrow 
is that He must have some divine and 
awful meaning in suffering men and 
women to suffer. Trust in Him, that 
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His Marriage 



pain and heart misery are not ends in 
themselves, toys with which the gods 
sport, but are means which a Father 
uses in his loving wisdom to bring His 
children to a knowledge of themselves. 
Get near to Him, and He, when no one 
else and nothing else, He will bring it to 
pass. 



153 



VII 

HIS RELIGION 

THE man in the market-place 
cannot isolate himself from 
other concerns. 
" Insulate man and you destroy him," 
says Emerson ; " he cannot live without 
a world." 

The physical life of a man demands 
that he shall have fields in which to play 
and plant, mines in which to dig, stuff 
of which to build, an objective world 
upon which he can lay his hand. 

The mental life of a man demands 
an intellectual world; it demands other 
minds to stimulate his, flint against 
which his will strike. No man can 
think independently of the thought of 
others. 

154 



His Religion 



And so the spiritual man must reach 
out and feel the existence of a spiritual 
world. There are journeys of the soul 
that find no resting place in terms of 
place and time. The thirst for right- 
eousness is an outreaching through 
things as they are, in quest of things 
as they should be. 

The sense of sin is a comparison with 
standards not set up on earth. Hence 
it comes that a man as naturally gropes 
after God in prayer and worship, through 
rites and in spite of them, as he sinks a 
shaft in the earth for treasure, or steeps 
himself in the literature of the ages. 

# # 
# 

Nevertheless, many young men shirk 
the responsibility of settling what they 
call the religious question. This arises 
in a variety of causes which I need not 
particularize. 

iS5 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

Let us consider some of the facts in 
the case. 

The prime fact is God, for I am not 
speaking to the fool who says in his 
heart there is no God. There will be 
few indeed who glance over these pages 
who have not some sort of a belief in 
God. 

When I say that men believe after 
some fashion in God, I do not mean 
that their faith comes easily, or that 
they hold it without struggle, and 
doubt, and fightings, and fears. 

Some men, doubtless, have no tremors 
and no heart searchings at all. They 
are easy-going, phlegmatic by nature, 
into whose souls the iron has never 
entered. They accept God as they 
accept the succession of the seasons. 
Or perhaps they are naturally religious- 
minded from childhood. They go on 
from strength to strength. In joy and 
156 



His Religion 



sorrow, in wealth and poverty, alike 
they feel underneath the touch of the 
everlasting arms. 

Other men are not so. The more 
serious and thoughtful they are, the more 
desirous of doing the right rather than 
the expedient thing, the greater diffi- 
culty do they find in ranging them- 
selves towards God. They hold Him 
in solution as it were. Honest-minded, 
not naturally religious in the formal 
sense of the term, they find themselves 
troubled by many questions, tangled up 
in many problems ; and if they find 
peace in any rational relationship with 
God, it is only after long, perhaps life- 
long struggle. 

I wish to say something to the young 
man who is beginning to think about 
God, or who has been thinking for a 
long time, and has arrived at no con- 
clusion satisfactory to himself. 
157 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

We are justified in speaking of God 
to you whose work and amusements, 
whose moral and intellectual life, in- 
terest us, because your idea of God 
is the touchstone by which all these 
other concerns are eventually tested. 

* 

I beg to clear the ground before us by 
calling attention to the very significant 
fact that many of the puzzles of life 
which cause men often to react from 
Gods law and grace as though they 
were not, proceed from man's miscon- 
ception of life. 

It falls out that men arraign God in 
the presence of failure, trouble, or dis- 
aster, and from arraignment fling them- 
selves into an attitude of denial. 

The laborer, whose lines are in hard 
places, curses the capital by which he is 
employed, and cries aloud that God is 
158 



His Religion 



unjust in permitting the inequalities of 
life. 

What has God to do with it, save as 
the tilling of his vineyard demands 
men of one, two, and five talents ? 
Let a man examine himself, when he 
complains that he is unfairly treated, 
and see how far unthrift, laziness, 
violence, and dissatisfaction with small 
things, have entered into the formation 
of his conditions and surroundings. 

A child dies of fever or pneumonia 
or w 7 hat you will, and parents piteously 
and bitterly say, why does God punish 
me so? There is no connection be- 
tween the death of a child and a pun- 
ishment of God, unless the child is 
the victim of broken law. God is not 
a whimsical demon, planting the darts 
of an immoral displeasure hither and 
thither. But if the sickness that 
proved fatal came from bad drainage 
159 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

or imprudence, how can the blame be 
laid upon Him? One might as well 
charge God with punishing us arbitra- 
rily for putting our hand in the fire. 
His punishments are always moral and 
retributive. His laws bring with them 
their own penalties for breakage. 

A man fails in business. Why does 
God treat me so ? It is not God. It 
is human bad management, dishon- 
esty, incompetence of employer or 
employee; it is the misuse of talents, 
or the endeavor to perform five-talent 
tasks with one-talent capital. But it 
is not God. A weak and fragile man 
might as well complain that God is to 
blame because he cannot lift a thou- 
sand pounds. 

# 

I am assuming that God is, that He 
was in the beginning of things, and 
.160 



His Religion 



that He will be forever, the source 
from which, the end tow r ard which, 
man is moving. 

I am justified in assuming this from 
the history of the human race. If I 
say that there is no God, I am set- 
ting myself outside of all human ex- 
perience and thought. It is not an 
inference, but a fact, that God has 
been, under whatever image, the fact 
of eminent domain in human affairs. 
A black stone falling from heaven ; a 
shining image of noble beauty; an ark 
of the covenant with hovering cheru- 
bim, — under all these forms man has 
stretched groping hands and laid hold 
upon the garments of God. He has 
burned himself in the fire, and drenched 
himself in water. He has poured forth 
tuns of wine and oil, and offered up 
holocausts of goats and calves. And 
God has accepted it all, because, 
w 161 



The Young Man in Modern Life 



through it, he saw men reaching up 
to Him. 

Man was growing all this time. 

One day there stood on the earth 
a Man who said, when ye pray, say 
our Father. God is Father. I and 
my Father are one. Know me and 
you will know my Father, who is 
your God and my God. 

The Man entered human history, and 
became its turning point. Know me, 
he said, and you will know yourselves. 
Follow me, and you will know me. I 
am the Truth (in human terms) of 
God. I am the Life of God mani- 
fested in human flesh. I am the Way, 
therefore, to God. 

# # 
# 

Now if a man has felt the dead and 
clammy touch of what is called agnos- 
ticism, and says, "We may like to 
162 



His Religion 



think and believe all this, but we can- 
not know it," I say to him, you may 
know Jesus of Nazareth. He is not 
a theological proposition, nor an eccle- 
siastical assumption. He stands out 
in the open. History touches his per- 
son at Bethlehem, in Jerusalem. Caesar 
and Pilate came in contact with him. 

His life, or the short period of which 
we have any details, is a science of 
manhood. 

The student soldier studies the lives 
and campaigns of great soldiers. The 
student at law delves into the charac- 
ter and methods and decisions of great 
jurists. The student of medicine walks 
the hospital where the great physicians 
touch the sick bodies of humanity. 

It is only the fool who would achieve 
knowledge without sitting at the feet 
of the masters of knowledge. 

You, young man, under whatever 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

earth mask, are striving for manhood. 
Are you not bound to study the great 
Man, the conspicuously great Man of 
all history ? 

Smart and witty men sometimes 
talk about the blindness of supersti- 
tions and the slavery of creeds, mean- 
ing the faith of a religious man and 
the belief of a Christian. 

But common sense can hardly fall 
under their scornful ban. And it is 
surely common sense that a man 
should seek a master for the things 
he desires to know. 

Is not Jesus such a Master for the 
man who wants to know the meaning 
of God and man in this world? 

We see him touching every salient 
point of human experience ; he did not 
shut himself up in a cell or hide away 
in a desert to pray for himself and 
others, 

164 



His Religion 



He hungered and thirsted and was 
tired. He was tempted and worried 
and harassed. He was misunderstood 
and betrayed. He died the victim of 
intolerance, ignorance, and fanaticism. 

We have the story of it all. He was 
not impassive. Tears fell from his 
eyes. He was heavy with grief. But 
as we read the story, we feel that he 
met these experiences in such a fashion 
as to be the victor over them. He was 
human, as human as we are. But his 
humanity did not break down under 
pressure. He lived his life to the bitter 
end. He shrank from the agony as 
you and I would, but he endured the 
cross, even despising the shame. 

Why? How? This is the secret he 
was always trying to impart to man. 

Into every life comes the same round 
of sorrowful puzzle and pain. It is a 
condition of the divine in man, shaping 
165 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

and transfiguring the animal. The per- 
fect man emerges, not in spite of the 
blows beating upon him, but because 
of them. Christ entered not into his 
joy, but first he suffered pain, not for the 
stripes' sake, but for his own sake. 

The secret he imparted by his life 
was, that struggle and sacrifice are the 
law of human expansion from childhood 
to manhood ; that the apparent decay 
and shattering of the human husk are 
the culture of finer and higher life; that 
unless a man die he cannot live. 

When the young man realizes the 
meaning of this, he has read the secret, 
and found the power of the Cross of 
Christ. 

# 

As you study the Man of Nazareth 
you will find yourself constantly referred 
in one way or another to God ; not by 
166 



His Religion 



way of definition, and certainly not in 
the way of theological argument. 

You misunderstand your needs when 
you say you must have proof of God's 
existence. What you need is the sense 
of God. 

What would be proof of the being of 
God, after the fashion of mathematical 
proof? Can you think of anything that 
would be equivalent ? 

" Hands cannot touch him," this God. 
" He does not exist in terms like that. 
The agnostic stands mute before a mys- 
tery, but — a mystery to the physical 
laboratory. The spirit of a man tran- 
scends the laboratory, as a mother's tear 
transcends the physical salts that image 
them. It acknowledges the same mys- 
tery, but while declaring that God is 
unknowable in some terms, it feels that 
he is knowable in others." 

One can feel the influence of a great 
167 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

poem, or the power of a great musical 
opus. We would not think of "prov- 
ing " then in terms. 

Two things affect man with a sense 
of the being of God, as could no angelic 
blare of trumpets, nor a great figure 
swinging himself down from star to 
star, and finally standing upon the 
earth. 

Sin is one of them. If you find your- 
self breaking the law of the universe, 
with results, you know yourself to be 
sinning against God. If your experi- 
ence is the same as that of men through 
all the ages, you will seek a readjust- 
ment. You find it but in God. 

Therefore effort towards readjustment 

is the other mode of apprehending Him. 

In right seeking and truth seeking, you 

feel yourself to be in harmony with that 

1 68 



His Religion 



supreme will which governs the stars in 
their courses, God. 

I do not advance these as self-evident 
propositions. To some they are. To 
many they are not. To the man who 
has been led to think that he cannot 
know God, I suggest that he question 
himself as to just what he means by 
knowledge, and to reflect that he is 
putting himself outside of all human 
experience. 

The fact is that the man to whom 
God is merely a figure of speech, or an 
irresponsible force, has allowed the dust 
of the earth life to blind him to the 
reality of the life beyond earth life. 
He has thought that threescore and 
ten years, more or less, among men is 
the beginning and the end, and that 
unless those years on this earth can in- 
terpret himself to himself, there is no 
interpretation. 

169 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

The bird in the egg has not plumbed 

all the depths or scaled all the heights 

of existence. 

# # 

How shall a man, who is honestly 
confused and troubled, clear the atmos- 
phere ? I charge you, young man, that 
you have no right to rest in some merely 
nominal and vague acknowledgment of 
the existence of One you call God, be- 
cause you have been taught that this is 
right. I charge you, on the other side, 
that you have no right to throw over 
the experience of the human race all 
through the ages, because it leans on 
God, whom you say you do not know. 
It is laid upon a man with will and con- 
science to seek after God, if, haply, he 
may find him. How? 

How do you go about any other seri- 
ous and important quest ? How do you 
170 



His Religion 



learn anything? By going to sources 
of knowledge. 

There are facts at your hand. Earth 
and man, to go no further. 

What has man said about God ? what 
has he thought of the origin and des- 
tiny of his race w r hich he feels — he 
cannot prove — transcends the dog and 
the ape ? 

You will come upon two things as 
the outcome of man's quest about self. 
He believes there is a purpose to the 
creation, of which he is a part, with 
which his life is bound up; and he learns 
that a Man once lived and left rec- 
ords and institutions behind him which 
throw light upon that purpose. 

Go to those records and inquire of 
these institutions. You have failed, and 
others have failed ? You may not have 
tried. You have no right to say that 
you have tried all things, sought all 
171 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

ways, until your last earthly breath is 
drawn. The quest of God is not a 
thing of a day. You will find Him. 

All this is old and trite ! Men have 
tried and failed, and tried again, through 
the centuries. Who am I that I should 
succeed when others, abler and better 
and stronger than I, have not? 

It is old in one sense, but new in 
another. 

You are a new problem. There never 
was one like you. There never will be 
another. When God made you in his 
own image, there must have been in his 
mind as clear and distinct a purpose as 
in the creation of the world. 

Now, have you tried to find out why 

you are in the world ? Have you really 

tried, agonized, struggled over it ? Have 

you fought against the evil of your en- 

172 



His Religion 



vironment? Have you striven against 
the subtle temptation to let well enough 
alone, and to be satisfied with the stand- 
ards of your generation ? 

Having tried, and being conscious — 
in your own thought — of failure, can 
you not realize that your day of struggle 
is not yet over ? 

Remember that the broken fragments 
of an earthly failure are often the con- 
ditions of a heavenly success. Shackles 
on the w r rist do not make a slave, except 
to the eyes of the world. Shackles on 
the soul lead captive the victims of 
many an earthly triumph. Judas had 
his thirty pieces of silver. Jesus had 
his cross. 

# 

Together with the great fact of the 
idea of God affecting a man's source 
and destiny, there is another fact which 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

the honest man must take into account. 
Above the babble of the market-place, 
he hears the voice of the Christian 
Church. Against the sky line of his 
horizon, he sees the Cross of Christ, 
alternating with the chimneys of com- 
merce. 

Other things speak to man of God, 
but the Christian Church has the mes- 
sage as its very raison d'etre. 

A man's environment, inherited or 
self-chosen, makes certain demands upon 
him. The Christian Church has cre- 
ated the Christian civilization, of which 
man is a part, under the privileges of 
which we live. Christianity, as held, 
taught, and propagated through the 
centuries, in the sacraments and preach- 
ing of the Church, is far too large a 
factor of modern life to be ignored, 
even amid the bustle and clamor of the 
market-place. 

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His Religion 



To the young man who is indifferent 
to, or impatient of, the claims of the 
Christian Church (the one Church of 
Christ, under its various names, the 
whole company of faithful people), I 
have this to say : — 

You are guaranteed your rights in the 
market place, in your property, in your 
very life, in the pursuit of happiness, 
and your liberty to choose, by the spirit 
of Christianity, and this spirit has been 
preserved, handed down, and spread 
abroad by the Christian Church. 

Do )'OU doubt this? Compare the 
nations of the earth which are Chris- 
tian with those which are not I do 
not mean to pick out individuals here 
and there, but to note the tide of human 
progress. 

Then compare the nations of a finer 
and purer type of Christianity with 
those which have not yet entirely 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

emerged from the semi-pagan domina- 
tion of the middle ages. 

Which civilization is preferable? 
Which commends itself, I will not say 
to the spiritual man, but to the man of 
keen eyes and busy brain in the market 
place, England or China? German 
principalities or the African tribes ? 
Australia at the present day or before 
it was colonized ? 

Ask yourself this question. 

If the positive influence of Chris- 
tianity, which can only be administered 
through institutions, were withdrawn 
from modern life, what would follow? 
There would be a long afterglow, but 
the light unfed would flicker and in the 
end die out. Men would inevitably go 
back to the blanket of savagery, or rot 
slowly into the muck heap of a civiliza- 
tion like that that died the death in 
Rome. 

176 



His Religion 



But you will say, however it has 
come, we have this spirit of civilization, 
and can very well get on without the 
Church. 

But you know surely that the influ- 
ence or spirit of Christianity was from 
the very first connected with prop- 
agating institutions, as all life is. Did 
you ever hear of a harvest of wheat 
coming from the spirit of wheat in the 
air? Life of all sorts manifests itself 
under conditions. The burden of proof 
lies somewhat heavily on the man who 
thinks that the spirit of Christ would be 
in our civilization, as its very salt to-day, 
without the institutions of Christ. 

Young man, you owe a debt to the 
institutions which have made your civ- 
ilization Christian instead of heathen. 
You owe such support as you are able 
to give to the Church, which is the only 

organized institution for the purpose 
12 l?7 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

of maintaining this civilization on broad 
foundations. If you doubt this, just 
turn over the pages of history, and see 
what would be left of modern civiliza- 
tion if Christ were withdrawn from its 
past, and had naught to do with its 
present. 

In those pages you will find stains 
and oppressions and strangled thought, 
and a host of other stumbling-blocks to 
progress, for which men believing and 
calling themselves Christians have been 
responsible. Platforms ring with the 
recital of them. Books are compiled 
from the record of them. They are 
there. 

But are they the influence and teach- 
ing of Christ ? You know better. Here 
and there a dirty quack practises on the 
credulity of men and carries misery 
from house to house. Do you lay that 
pitiful little atomy to the influence of 
178 



His Religion 



medicine and surgery? You are not 
such a fool. 

I know about the inquisition, and the 
witch burning, and the persecutions, 
Roman, Anglican, and Puritan, for con- 
science' sake. 

But was it Christ, or a perversion of 
Christ's teaching by narrow little fanati- 
cisms that sometimes lay hold of the 
souls of holy men? You know. You 
know also that this fair and glorious 
Republic of ours contains all sorts of 
parties, and cliques, and patriots, without 
number, who has each his panacea for 
the needs of the body politic. You 
know how we are always discussing 
(through the newspaper press and the 
partisan pamphlets) treasons and shames 
and corruptions, and how we are always 
going down to destruction if the other 
side wins. Do you believe it ? Do you 
have less faith in the constitution, or the 
179 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

flag, or in the future of our national 
life ? 

Not if you are an American. And 
yet there are traitors, and corruptionists, 
and tricksters, who train under the starry 
standard of this land. 

Now it is well to get down below the 
surface of life and see the realities. The 
Church has steadily maintained through 
all the ages the rights of man to rest 
from his daily labor. One of the insti- 
tutions of Christianity is Sunday. The 
world needs its Sabbath. You know 
that. 

But the forces of civilization that are 
not Christian are straining every nerve 
to break it down. The Church does not 
say, "cease work that you may go to 
church," but " cease work that your 
human powers may not be frayed and 
worn out before their time." 

The Christian Church and the Chris- 
180 



His Religion 



tian Sunday are the only barriers against 
a secularism that would else engulf the 
man and woman who work for their daily 
bread. 

Therefore, young man, the Church 
has a claim on you on merely humani- 
tarian grounds, whether you be an ag- 
nostic or a Turk, an infidel or a heretic. 
You may choose to play golf on Sunday 
morning. Remember that others choose 
to worship God after the fashion of the 
ages. Your legal rights in most com- 
munities are equal. But neither one of 
you would be able to carry your desires 
into effect, were it not for the spirit of 
Christ brooding through the years, in 
hallowed temples of prayer and sacra- 
ments, and taught, however imperfectly 
and unworthily, from chancel and pul- 
pit. 

Some people fondly delude themselves 
with what they call worshipping God in 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

the woods and fields, all days and all 
hours, and talk lightly of the supersti- 
tions of consecrated places and days. 

There is a truth in this. It lies close 
to the very heart of Jesus' teaching. But 
it is not all of the truth nor the whole of 
his teaching. If it had not been quali- 
fied and limited, that sort of worship 
would consist to-day even as it did of old. 
You may read in any ancient history of 
the worship of the groves. The man of 
the twentieth century need not think 
himself less of a beast than his ancestors 
who cut themselves before altars, offered 
their children in the fire, and did other 
11 religious " acts, of which it is a shame 
to write or speak. 

He is a more self-centred animal to-day. 
He knows himself; and a part of this 
knowledge is that he is a son of God as 
well as a child of the earth, and that his 
kinship with God is the part of him 
182 



His Religion 



most worth development. He knows 
that the earth relationship is temporal, 
the heavenly eternal. He knows that 
a man is better than a dog. He has 
beaten down or transformed the lower 
nature under a sense of responsibility 
for his existence. And he knows these 
things from the Christ of the gospels, as 
set forth in the Church. 

He has some duties arising from the 
rights granted him by a Christian civili- 
zation. Let him seek out these duties. 

But there is another and, I am con- 
strained to believe, a larger class of men 
who have quite the opposite attitude 
towards the Church. 

They say and think that they are not 
good enough to belong to it, to share in 
its promises, and to partake of its privi- 
leges. 

183 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

What do you mean exactly, young 
man, when you say you are not good 
enough ? I have talked with a great 
many of you on that point, and no sin- 
gle one of you has ever justified the 
statement, when he understood more than 
the superficial letter of it. 

If you mean that you are conscious of 
being a sinner, weak, unworthy, liable 
to fall under temptation, it is very likely. 

What is your desire, your wish, in 
regard to these things ? Do you wish 
to grow stronger, to be worthy, to free 
yourself from the snares of temptation; 
to live a clean life, as becomes a son of 
the highest? Then the Church is open 
to you. It is your rightful place. It 
demands that repentance which turns 
away from sin and a serious and honest 
striving to be by your own free act what 
you are by your divine inheritance, a son 
of God. 

184 



His Religion 



The Church is not a club for good 
people. It is not a mutual admiration 
society for the elect. Communion at its 
altar is not a badge of having reached a 
certain stage of piety. The Church is a 
hospital for sick souls, a school for the 
childish and ignorant. 

It is because you are not "good 
enough " that you are fit for the Church, 
if you are sincere. Only your own 
habits can stand in the way, habits of 
thought and of action. Such habits 
demand strenuous effort to throw off. 
You need all the help you can get. The 
institutions of Christianity have no other 
reason for their existence than this, to 
help you to that manhood of which the 
type is Jesus of Nazareth. 

One thing more. Do not be dis- 
couraged. 

Every patriot does not win every 
battle, but every patriot follows the flag 
185 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

and tries to win every battle. He does 
not turn traitor nor coward, does not 
leave the battlefield and shrink from it, 
because of weakness, defeats, tremors of 
fear. You, young man, and such as 
you, have been the channels of that in- 
fluence and spirit of Christ of which we 
have spoken. Divine treasure has al- 
ways been handed down in earthen 
vessels. The Church needs you also. 
Evil is incorporated in a hundred forms. 
The Church, whatever failings may be 
discerned in its individual membership, 
is incorporated good. The young man 
thinks that he can be just as good a 
man outside the Church. But that is 
not the whole duty of a man. He is 
bound to do good for others. The 
soldier serves his cause better in the 
ranks of the army than as an irrespon- 
sible guerilla. 

The Church does not ask of a man 
1 86 



His Religion 



more than a sincere man should ask of 
himself ; but it helps him to achieve 
his standard. 

# 

As the years lengthen out, and the 
first enthusiasm of service with the 
Master dies away, there will come re- 
action. The cares of life, the disap- 
pointments, the failure to realize hopes, 
the responsibilities of success, all these 
will spring up in the field. Your pro- 
fession and calling will seem to be in 
abeyance. Nominally Christian, the joy 
in His service will have been displaced 
by the world's service. Year by year 
you will go less frequently to the Me- 
morial he laid as a charge and privilege 
upon all his disciples. The Church will 
perhaps grow to be merely an adjunct 
of respectable citizenship. If you look 
into your life, under some pressure, you 
187 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

will be forced to ask the question, " How 
do I differ from my neighbor who never 
made any profession ? Am I not a 
hypocrite even as I go to church and sit 
through the service ? " 

This state of mind is not uncommon. 
Now, little as you think it, there is a 
difference between you and the unvowed 
man ; a very grave difference, that of 
responsibility. The vows you once 
made are just as solemn obligations 
upon you now as in the hour you made 
them. They do not require you to be 
an archangel, but to be a man. Your 
carelessness or neglect has not released 
you in one jot or tittle. 

The noblesse oblige of the baptismal 
vow to be " Christ's faithful soldier and 
servant unto life's end," that is the 
difference between you and the man 
who has not ratified that vow in his 
own person. 

188 



His Religion 



And you are not a hypocrite, my 
good friend, even if you feel coldness 
and lack of spiritual receptiveness now 
and then at the Holy Communion. Do 
not ask yourself, what did I get in the 
feast? There is something else. 

" I came away," said a child of faith 
once to me, "feeling as though I had 
not taken part ; as though it was some- 
thing I had seen far, far away; as though 
my eyes had been there, but not my 
mind or heart." 

The answer was, " You were obeying 
the Lord's will in going. You gave 
something by your hour of worship; 
therefore whether you were conscious of 
it or not, you received something." 

You are not a hypocrite, young man, 
because you are not always aflame with 
devotion. 

You are never a hypocrite so long as 
you are, honestly, to the best of your 
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The Young Man in Modern Life 

light, trying to keep your heart pure, 
your body undefiled, and your soul open 
towards God. 

When you feel that you have broken 
the vow of Christian manhood, you are 
not a hypocrite if, on the other hand, 
you seek in either prayer or sacrament 
for His blessed help to do better. You 
know whether you are any better or 
happier for striving to have your own 
way, or for adjusting your way to His 
purpose, which includes you and the 
whole universe beside. 

But, is there nothing else ? Suppose 
my faith has been shattered; suppose 
the creed seems unreal ; suppose I can- 
not pray because somehow I have lost 
my belief in prayer. How am I to get 
the help of Christ in his Church, if 
I no longer see clearly that he is my 
Saviour ? 

Has the Christian Church any mes- 
190 



His Religion 



sage for a man who, having once knelt 
at her altars, now sees no reason in an 
altar ? 

Those are dark days for a sincere man 
when the ground of his childhood's faith 
in God and Christ seems to be slipping 
away. Even then the Church has a 
message, however, and would be very 
unlike her Founder if she had not. 

Her first word to such a soul is, stand 
fast in the things you do believe. Good- 
ness is goodness, apart from intellectual 
acceptance of even the simplest facts of 
theology. 

When the dust of the earth's struggles 
and trials hides the vision of God from 
you, do the next thing you ought to do, 
as honestly and worthily as you can, and 
bide his time. He does not measure 
things as we do. He often sees a heart 
191 



The Young Man in Modern Life 

of gold, when we carry a lump of 
lead. 

Two men long ago were involved in 
the same wreck and disaster of earthly 
plans and hopes. 

One escaped from the tottering walls 
of a falling cause, snatching thirty pieces 
of silver in'exchange for honor, as he 
fled, and he went to his own place. 

The other started to fly, — it was very 
human, — he tried three times in succes- 
sion to escape his doom, but he was an 
honest man at heart, and he went back 
to stand by the Man who had taught him 
that men may die while manhood re- 
mains. So Peter became a knight of 
God. 

# 

A man's intellectual faith may be 
shaken by one cause or another, but the 
will of God remains to be done, that 
192 



His Religion 



will of which every man has a vision, in 
the state of life where it pleased God to 
call him. These things of which I have 
been speaking in these pages, the things 
that make up the details of a man's life 
work, play, companionship, are earthly 
instruments by which the divine will of 
the Father is to be done. It is as cer- 
tain as that a man lives that, if he uses 
these instruments faithfully and honestly, 
he will know, some time and somewhere, 
what further his heavenly Father desires 
of him. 



13 193 



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